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POEMS OF THE GREAT WAR 



, THE BELGIAN SCHOLARSHIP COMMITTEE 
Washington, D.C. 

The Aims of the Committee are briefly expressed as follows : — 

1. To give to Belgian scholars, writers and artists 
a chance to resume their work. 

2. To raise a fund to assist in the reconstruction 
of a new and greater Belgium in the educational field, 
as soon as the war is over. 

Nevil Monroe Hopkins, 

Chairman. 



POEMS 



OF 



THE GREAT WAR 



SELECTED BY 

J. W. CUKLIFFE 
ii 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AND ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF THE 
SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM OF COLUMBIA UNI- 
VERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK 



ON BEHALF OF THE BELGIAN 
SCHOLARSHIP COMMITTEE 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1916 

All rights reserved 






COPYBI&HT, 1916, 

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1916. 




NOV 23 1916 



Norinootr ^teas 

J. S. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



CI.A445754 



■k 



PREFACE 

The responsibility for the selection of the poems 
included in this volume rests entirely on my shoul- 
ders, though I am pleased to acknowledge the very 
kind help on this side of the Atlantic of Mr. Ed- 
ward C. Marsh of the Macmillan Company, Miss 
Helen Rex Keller, Librarian of the School of Jour- 
nalism, and Professor A. H. Thorndike of Colum- 
bia University ; in England of Mr. F. Madan, 
Bodley's Librarian, Mr. G. W. Wheeler and 
Mr. J. W. Small wood of the Radcliffe Camera, 
Oxford, Sir Walter Raleigh, Lady Scallon, Mr. A. 
R. Waller, Sir Adolphus Ward, and Sir Herbert 
Warren. While poetic merit has been, of course, 
the paramount consideration, I have endeavored 
to exercise a catholic judgment, and to give fair 
representation to various schools of thought and 
expression as well as to the various phases of the 
War. If undue prominence seems to be given to 
what may be called its more personal aspects — the 
spirit of sacrifice and devotion which inspired men 
and women to give themselves and those dearest to 
them to a great cause — I must plead in excuse 

v 



vi PREFACE 



that during much of the time of the preparation 

of this volume my mind was full of the memory of 

my friend Lieut. -Col. G. H. Baker of the 5th 

Canadian Mounted Rifles, who fell in command of 

his battalion during the third battle of Ypres on 

June 2, 1916. 

J. W. CUNLIFFE. 



CLASSIFIED CONTENTS AND 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

The Belgian Scholarship Committee returns its sin- 
cere and hearty thanks to the authors and publishers 
whose generosity has made this volume possible. 
Details of indebtedness are given below, the permis- 
sion of the owner of the copyright, whether for Great 
Britain or for the United States or for both, having 
been obtained in all cases except one or two where 
difficulties of communication made the consent of the 
actual copyright holders impossible ; in these cases 
their authorized representatives were consulted to 
make sure that they would have no objection. 



AUSTRALIA 

PAGE 

Sandes, John : AUSTRALIANS TO THE FRONT . 223 
From The Sydney Daily Telegraph. 

Strong, Archibald T. : AUSTRALIA TO ENGLAND . 250 

From Sonnets of the Empire (Macmillan & Co.). 

vii 



viii CONTENTS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

CANADA 

PAOX 

Campbell, Wilfred : LANGEMARCK . . . .46 
From The Ottawa Evening Journal. 

Holland, Norah M. : APRIL IN ENGLAND . . .133 
From the University Magazine (Montreal). 

McRae, John : IN FLANDERS FIELDS . . .180 

From Punch. 

Middleton, J. E. : OFF HELIGOLAND . . . .185 

Pickthall, Marjorie L. C. : CANADA TO ENGLAND . 213 
From the London Times. 

Roberts, Charles G. D. : TO SHAKESPEARE, 1916 . 215 

From A Book of Homage to Shakespeare, edited by 
Professor Israel Gollancz (Oxford University Press). 

Scott, (Canon) F. G. (of the Canadian Expeditionary 

Force) : REQUIESCANT . . . .229 

From the London Times. 

"Seranus": THE MOTHER 234 

Stead, Robert J. C. : KITCHENER OF KHARTOUM . 245 
From the Calgary Albertan. 

Watson, Albert D.: MOTHER OF NATIONS . . 279 

INDIA 

Jung, (Nawab) Nizamat (Judge of the High Court of 

Hyderabad) : INDIA TO ENGLAND . . 140 

From the London Daily Telegraph. 

Tagore, (Sir) Rabindranath : THE TRUMPET . . 253 
From the London Times. 



CONTENTS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix 
UNITED KINGDOM 

PAOB 

WRITTEN ON SERVICE IN EGYPT .... 1 

From The Poetry Beview. 

Aldington, Richard : WAR YAWP 3 

From Poetry. 

Alexander, Eleanor : A NEGLECTED GARDEN . . 7 
From the London Times. 

Allsop, Henry : YOUNG AND OLD .... 9 

From Songs from a Dale in War Time (G. Bell & 
Sons, Ltd.). 

Asquith, (Lieut.) Herbert: THE FALLEN SUBAL- 
TERN 10 

From The Volunteer and Other Poems (Sidgwick 
and Jackson, Ltd. ) . 

Begbie, Harold : NEUTRAL ? 15 

From Fighting Lines and Various Reinforcements 
(Constable & Co., Ltd.). 

Binyon, Laurence : FOR THE FALLEN ... 21 

From The Winnowing Fan, Poems on the Great 
War (Elkin Mathews ; Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 
U.S.A.). 

Blair, Wilfrid : A BALLAD OF DEATHLESS DONS . 23 
From 'Tis Simple Mirth (Black well, Oxford). 

Bliss, H. W.: "ANY FRIEND TO ANY FRIEND" . 28 

From England, My England, a War Anthology, 
edited by George Goodchild (Jarrold & Sons). 

Bourdillon, F. W. : HERE : AND THERE ... 30 

From Christmas Roses for 1914 (A. L. Hum- 
phreys) . 



X CONTENTS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

PAGE 

Bridges, Robert : LORD KITCHENER .... 31 
From the London Times. 

Brooke, Rupert : THE SOLDIER 38 

Erom 1914 cind Other Poems (Sidgwick & Jackson, 
Ltd.) and The Collected Poems of Bupert Brooke 
(John Lane Company, New York). 

Burghclere, Lord : AFTERMATH 39 

From Pro Patria et Bege, edited by Professor W. 
A. Knight (J. & J. Bennett, Ltd.). 

Chalmers, Patrick R. : GUNS OF VERDUN ... 61 
From Punch. 

Chartres, Annie Vivanti : THE BROKEN ROSE . . 52 
From King Albert's Book (Hodder & Stoughton). 

Chesterton, Gilbert K. : THE WIFE OF FLANDERS . 54 
From War Poems (Burns & Oates) and Poems 
(John Lane Co., New York). 

Clayton, (The Rev.) Philip Byard: THEY HELD 

THEIR GROUND 56 

From Lest We Forget, edited by H. D. Elliott (Jar- 
rold & Sons) . 

Courtney, W. L. : BY THE NORTH SEA ... 71 

From King Albert's Book. 

Crewe, Lord : A HARROW GRAVE IN FLANDERS . 74 
From The Harrovian. 

Crow, Gerald H. : WHEN THEY HAVE MADE AN 

END 75 

From Chosen Poems (A. H. Bullen). 

de la Mare, Walter : HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE . . 76 
From the London Times. 



CONTENTS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi 

PAGE 

Drinkwater, John : THE DEFENDERS .... 77 

From The " Country Life " Anthology of Verse, 
edited "by P. Anderson Graham. 

Faber, Geoffrey: "FOR THOSE AT SEA" ... 84 
From Interflow (Constable & Co., Ltd.). 

Fagan, James Bernard : THE MAN IN THE TRENCH 85 
From the London Daily Telegraph. 

Falconer, Agnes S. : TERRITORIALS .... 87 
From Tlie " Country Life" Anthology of Verse. 

Frankau, (Adjutant) Gilbert : HEADQUARTERS . . 90 
From The Guns (Chatto & Windus) and A Song of 
the Guns (Houghton Mifflin Co.) 

Freeman, John : THE RETURN 92 

From the Westminster Gazette. 

Freston, H. Rex : THE GIFT 93 

From The Quest of Truth (Blackwell, Oxford). 

Friedlaender, (Miss) V. H. : PASSOVER ... 95 
From The " Country Life" Anthology of Verse. 

G. A. J. C. : IRELAND 97 

From the London Times. 

Gard, Lillian : HER « ALLOWANCE " .... 99 
From The " Country Life " Anthology of Verse. 

Gibson, Wilfrid Wilson : BETWEEN THE LINES . 100 

From Battle (Elkin Mathews; The Macmillan Co., 
New York). 

Gilbert, Bernard : "I HAVE NO RING" . . .110 
From the English Beview and War Workers. 



Xll CONTENTS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

PAGE 

Gillespie, Violet : THE DEAD Ill 

Prom Poems of 1915 (Erskine Macdonald). 

Goddard, Gregg : THE AIRMAN 114 

From The Poetry Beview. 

Graves, Alfred Perceval : BROTHERS IN ARMS . . 115 
From The Contemporary Beview. 

Grenfell, Julian : INTO BATTLE 118 

From the London Times. 

Griffiths, Nord : THE WYKEHAMIST . . . .121 
From The " Country Life'''' Anthology of Verse. 

Hamilton, Cicely : NON-COMBATANT . . . .125 
From the Westminster Gazette. 

Hardy, Thomas: "MEN WHO MARCH AWAY" . 126 

From Satires of Circumstance (Macmillan and Co.; 
The Macmillan Co., New York) . 

Harwood, H. C. : FROM THE YOUTH OF ALL NA- 
TIONS 128 

From Oxford Poetry 1915 (Blackwell, Oxford). 

Hewlett, Maurice : SOLDIER, SOLDIER . . .131 
From Gai Saber : Tales and Songs (Elkin Mathews). 

Hussey, (Lieut.) Dyneley: THINGS THAT WERE 

YOURS 134 

From Fleur de Lys (Erskine Macdonald). 

J. H. S. : JOAN OF FRANCE TO AN ENGLISH SIS- 
TER 135 

From the Oxford Magazine. 

Jacob, (Mrs.) Violet: THE TWA WEELUMS . . 136 
From Country Life. 



CONTENTS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii 

PAGE 

Jenkins, Elinor : A LEGEND OF YPRES . . .138 
From Poems (Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd.). 

John, Edmund: IN MEMORIAM (To Field Marshal 

Lord Roberts) 139 

From The Wind in the Temple (Erskine Macdonald). 

Letts, Winifred M. : THE SPIRES OF OXFORD . . 167 
From the Westminster Gazette. 

Lucas, E. V. : THE DEBT 166 

From The Sphere. 

Lulham, Habberton : HIS ONLY WAY . . . .169 

From The Other Side of Silence (Simpkin, Mar- 
shall, Hamilton, Kent & Co.). 

Mackereth, James A. : A HYMN OF LOYALTY . . 172 
From The Poetry Beview. 

Masefield, John : THE ISLAND OF SKYROS . . 175 

From Good Friday and Other Poems (The Mac- 
millan Co., New York). 

Meugens, (Miss) M. G. : THE FLEETS . . . .181 
From The " Country Life " Anthology of Verse. 

Meynell, Alice : SUMMER IN ENGLAND, 1914 . . 183 
From the London Times. 

N. M. H.: A. K. S., JULY 14, 1915 192 

From the Oxford Magazine. 

Nesbit, E.: A SONG OF PEACE AND HONOR . . 193 

From The New Witness. 

Nicklin, John A. : THE FISHER LAD . . . .196 

From " And They Went to the War" (Sidgwick & 
Jackson, Ltd.). 



xiv CONTENTS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

PAGE 

Noyes, Alfred : THE SEARCHLIGHTS . . . .197 
From A Salute from the Fleet (Methuen) and The 
Lord of Misrule (The Frederick A. Stokes Co., New- 
York). 

O. M. : MASTER AND PUPIL 199 

From The Spectator. 

"Observer, Royal Flying Corps": TWO PICTURES . 202 
From Oxford and Flanders (Blackwell). 

Ogilvie, W. H. : CANADIANS 203 

From The " Country Life 1 ''' Anthology of Verse. 

Oswald, (Major) Sydney : THE DEAD SOLDIER . 204 

From The Poetry Beview. 

Pain, Barry : THE KAISER AND GOD . . .205 

From the London Times. 

Phillips, Stephen : REVENGE FOR RHEIMS . . 212 

From Panama and Other Poems (John Lane ; The 
John Lane Co., New York). 

Pope, Jessie : SOCKS 214 

From Jessie Pope's War Poems (Grant Richards, 
Ltd.). 

Robinson, A. Mary F. (Madame Duclaux) : BELGIUM 

THE BAR-LASS 216 

From the London Times. 

Ross, (Lt. Col.) Sir Ronald: SHAKESPEARE, 1916 . 221 
From A Book of Homage to Shakespeare. 

Sandford, Egbert: HER PRAYER — FOR HIM . . 225 
From Brookdown (Erskine Macdonald). 



CONTENTS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XV 

PAGE 

Seaman, (Sir) Owen : THE WAYSIDE CALVARY . 230 
Erom Made in England (Constable & Co., Ltd.). 

Shillito, (TheKev.) Edward: A THANKSGIVING . 235 
Erom Pro Patria et Bege. 

Sidgwick, Frank :" FORM FOURS " . . . .236 
From Some Verse, by F. S. (Sidgwick & Jackson, 
Ltd.). 

Sinclair, May : FIELD AMBULANCE IN RETREAT . 238 
From King Albert's Book. 

Smith, (The Rev.) Isaac Gregory : CLOSE YOUR RANKS 240 
From Pro Patria et Bege. 

Sorley, Charles Hamilton: ALL THE HILLS AND 

VALES ALONG 243 

From Marlborough and Other Poems (Cambridge 
University Press) . 

Stephens, James : THE SPRING IN IRELAND : 1916 . 246 

From Green Branches (The Macmillan Co., New 
York). 

Stuart, Andrew John (Viscount) : SAILOR, WHAT OF 

THE DEBT WE OWE YOU ? . . .251 

From the London Times. 

Taylor, Frank : ENGLAND'S DEAD . . . .255 
From The Spectator. 

Thomas, Gilbert : THE UNCONQUERED HOPE . . 262 
From The Further Goal (Erskine Macdonald). 

Tollemache, (The Hon. ) Grace E. : SONNET (Oct. 1, 1914) 264 
From Lyrics and Short Poems (Elkin Mathews). 



xvi CONTENTS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

PAGE 

Tripp, (Lance Corporal) D. Howard : AFTERMATH . 266 
From The Poetry Beview. 

Tynan, Katharine : A GIRL'S SONG . . . .267 
From Flower of Youth (Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd.) 

Vickridge, Alberta : THE CONSCRIPT . . . .274 
From The Poetry Beview. 

Walker, A. Stodart : IN A SLUM 276 

From Verses of Consolation and Other Lines Written 
in War Time (Maclehose & Sons, Glasgow). 

Warren, (Sir) Herbert: ENGLAND TO DENMARK, 

August, 1915 278 

From The Spectator. 

Watson, William : OUR MEN 281 

From the London Evening News. 

Watt, (The Rev.) Lauchlan Maclean (Chaplain to the 

Forces) : THE REAPERS . . . .283 

From the London Times. 

Williams, Iolo Aneurin ■ FROM A FLEMISH GRAVE- 
YARD .288 

From Poems (Methuen & Co., Ltd.). 

Woods, (Mrs.) Margaret L. : THE FIRST BATTLE OF 

YPRES 290 

From the Fortnightly Beview. 

X. : KITCHENER 296 

From the Sunday Times. 

Young, (Lieut.) Francis Brett, R.A.M.C. : MARCH- 
ING ON TANGA 297 

From the London Times. 



CONTENTS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS XV11 
UNITED STATES 

PAOB 

Baker, Karle Wilson : UNSER GOTT . . . .11 
From Poetry. 

Ben6t, William Rose : THE RED COUNTRY . . 17 
From Beedy^s Mirror. 

Bodenheim, Maxwell : THE CAMP FOLLOWER . . 29 
From Poetry. 

Brody, Alter : KARTfrSHKIYA-BEROZA ... 32 
From the Atlantic Monthly. 

Burnet, Dana : THE RETURN 41 

From Poems (Harper and Bros., New York and 
London) . 

Burr, Amelia Josephine: KITCHENER'S MARCH . 44 

From The Outlook. 
Colcord, Lincoln : VISION OF WAR ; CANTO I . 58 

From Vision of War (The Macmillan Co.). 
Corbin, Alice : FALLEN 70 

From Poetry. 
Crawford, Charlotte Holmes : VIVE LA FRANCE ! . . 72 

From Scribner's Magazine. 

Driscoll, Louise : THE METAL CHECKS ... 78 
From Poetry. 

Foulke, William Dudley : HONOR TO FRANCE . . 88 
From The Indianapolis Star. 

Frank, (Mrs.) Florence Kiper : THE JEWISH CON- 
SCRIPT 89 

From The Jew to Jesus, and Other Poems (Mitchell 
Kennerley). 



XV111 CONTENTS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

PAGE 

Giddings, Franklin H. : ULTIMATE HELL . . .107 
From The New York Times.. 

Glaenzer, Kichard Butler : "SURE, IT'S EUN ! " . . 112 
From The Boston Transcript. 

Hagedorn, Hermann : THE PYRES . . . .122 

From The Outlook. 

KaufEman, Reginald Wright : THE NATIONS' DAVID 142 
From the London Daily Express. 

Kaufman, Herbert : THE HELL-GATE OF SOISSONS 146 

From The Song of the Guns (T. Fisher Unwin, 
London) and Little Old Belgium (Henry Altemus 
Co., Philadelphia). 

Kilmer, Joyce : THE WHITE SHIPS AND THE RED 151 
From The New York Times. 

Kreymborg, Alfred : OVERHEARD IN AN ASYLUM 155 

From Others, an Anthology of the New Verse 
(Alfred Knopf). 

Lindsay, Vachel : ABRAHAM LINCOLN WALKS AT 

MIDNIGHT 159 

From The Congo and Other Poems (The Mac- 
millan Co.). 

Lowell, Amy : PATTERNS 161 

From Some Imagist Poets (Houghton Mifflin Co.). 

MacKaye, Percy : CHRISTMAS, 1915 . . . .171 
From Poems and Plays (The Macmillan Co.). 

Masters, Edgar Lee : GLORIOUS FRANCE . . 177 
From Songs and Satires (The Macmillan Co.). 



CONTENTS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xix 

PAGE 

Mitchell, Ruth Comfort : HE WENT FOR A SOLDIER 187 
From Smart Set and The Night Court and Other 
Verses (The Century Co.). 

Monroe, Harriet : ON THE PORCH . . . .190 

From Poetry. 

Peabody, Josephine Preston : MEN HAVE WINGS AT 

LAST • .207 

From Harvest Moon (Houghton Mifflin Co.). 

Robinson, Edwin Arlington : CASSANDRA . . .218 
From The Man against the Sky (The Macmillan 
Co.). 

Sandburg, Carl : STATISTICS 222 

From Others, an Anthology of the New Verse 
(Alfred Knopf). 

Scollard, Clinton : THE VALE OF SHADOWS . . 226 
From The Vale of Shadows and other Verses of 
the Great War (Lawrence J. Gomme). 

Seeger, Alan: I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH 

DEATH 232 

From The North American Beview. 

Smith, Marion C. : HEART OF ALL THE WORLD . 242 

From The Nation. 

Swift, (Mrs.) Elizabeth Townsend : FROM AMERICA 252 
From Pro Patria et Bege. 

Teasdale, Sara : SPRING IN WAR TIME . . .259 
From Bivers to the Sea (The Macmillan Co.). 



XX CONTENTS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

PAGE 

Thomas, Edith M.: SAID ATTILA THE HUN TO — 260 

From The White Messenger (Eichard G. Badger, 
Boston). 

Towne, Charles Hanson : TO MY COUNTRY . . 265 
From Today and Tomorrow (George H. DoranCo.) 

Untermeyer, Louis : THE LAUGHERS . . . .269 
From The Masses. 

Van Vorst, Marie : THE AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS 273 
From War Poems (Gay & Hancock, London). 

Wharton, (Mrs.) Edith: BELGIUM. La Belgique ne 

Begrette Bien 285 

From King Albert's Book. 

Widdemer, Margaret : THE WAKENED GOD . . 286 
From Poetry. 



POEMS OF THE GREAT WAR 



POEMS OF THE GREAT WAR 



WRITTEN ON SERVICE IN EGYPT 1 

Behind us in vermilion state 

The sun fell to the rustling sea, 

The grey-green twilight came and went, 

And night involved my friend and me. 

Now Egypt donned her fairest robes 
Of glimmering moonshine cool and clear : 
No more we talked, and silently 
Made o'er the waste to Abu Qir. 

For, with the twilight, twilight dreams 
Had come and borne our souls away, 
Though still our bodies onward fared 
Toward the palm-trees and the bay. 

And my companion now, I think, 
With brother-artists once again 
Was painting in the atelier, 
Or down some dear Parisian lane 

1 When last heard from, the author, who is a British 
officer, was on service at Khartoum. 

B 1 



ANONYMOUS 



Was seeking with a motley throng 
That well-remembered brasserie, 
And Trilby, hanging on his arm, 
Was laughing at him merrily. 

But I, ah, where was I ? Afar 
I'd flown to that enchanted shore, 
Where o'er white-flashing waves the wind 
From Donegal to Mullaghmore 
Comes gallivanting bold and free — 
God grant again I there may be, 
At Mullaghmore, with Rosalind. 



RICHARD ALDINGTON 



WAR YAWP 

America ! 

England's cheeky kid brother, 

Who bloodily assaulted your august elder 

At Bunker Hill and similar places 

(Not mentioned in our history books), 

What can J[ tell you of war or of peace f 

Say, have you forgotten 1861 f 

Bull Run, Gettysburg, Fredericksburg f 

Your million dead f 

Tell me, 

Was that the greatest time of your lives 

Or the most disastrous f 

Who knows? Not you; not I. 

Who can tell the end of this war f 

And say, brother Jonathan, 

D'you know what it's all about f 

Let me whisper you a secret — we don't ! 

We were all too fat with peace, 

Or perhaps we didn't quite know how good peace was, 

And so here we are, 

And we're going to win. . . . 

It's fine to be a soldier, 

To get accepted by the recruiting sergeant, 



RICHARD ALDINGTON 



Be trained, fitted with a uniform and a gun, 

Say good-bye to your girl, 

And go off to the front 

Whistling, "It's a long way to Tipperary." 

It's good to march forty miles a day, 

Carrying ninety-one pounds on your back, 

To eat good coarse food, get blistered, tired out, 

wounded, 
Thirst, starve, fight like a devil 
(i.e., like you an' me, Jonathan), 
With the Maxims zip-zipping 
And the shrapnel squealing, 
And the howitzers rumbling like the traffic in Picca- 

dilly. 

Civilization ? — 

Jonathan, if you could hear them 

Whistling the Marseillaise or Marching Through 

Georgia, 
You'd want to go too. 
Twenty thousand a day, Jonathan ! 
Perhaps you're more civilized just now than we are, 
Perhaps we've only forgotten civilization for a 

moment, 
Perhaps we're really fighting for peace. 
And after all it will be more fun afterwards — 
More fun for the poets and the painters — 
When the cheering's all over 



RICHARD ALDINGTON 



And the dead men buried 

And the rest gone back to their jobs. 

It'll be more fun for them to make their patterns, 

Their word-patterns and color-patterns. 

And after all, there is always war and always peace, 

Always the war of the crowds, 

Always the great peace of the arts. 

Even now, 

With the war beating in great waves overhead, 

Beating and roaring like great winds and mighty 

waters, 
The sea-gods still pattern the red seaweed fronds, 
Still chip the amber into neck-chains 
For Leucothea and Thetis. 
Even now, 

When the Marseillaise screams like a hurt woman, 
And Paris — grisette among cities — trembles with 

fear, 
The poets still make their music 
Which nobody listens to, 
Which hardly anyone ever listened to. 

The great crowds go by, 

Fighting over each other's bodies in peace-time, 

Fighting over each other's bodies in war-time. 

Something of the strife comes to them 

In their little, high rock-citadel of art, 



6 RICHARD ALDINGTON 

Where they hammer their dreams in gold and 

copper, 
Where they cut them in pine-wood, in Parian stone, 

in wax, 
Where they sing them in sweet bizarre words 
To the sound of antiquated shrill instruments ; 
And they are happy. 

The little rock-citadel of the artists 

Is always besieged ; 

There, though they have beauty and silence, 

They have always tears and hunger and despair. 

But that little citadel has held out 

Against all the wars of the world — 

Like England, brother Jonathan. 

It will not fall during the great war. 

There is always war and always peace ; 
Always the war of the crowds, 
Always the great peace of the arts. 

1914. — Richard Aldington. 

(No. 24,965, " E" Company, 11th Devons.) 






ELEANOR ALEXANDER 



A NEGLECTED GARDEN 

Barren the garden lies, undressed ; 
Long weeds like serpents coil and squeeze 
Forsaken loves of faithless bees, 
Boughs broken, to the ground are pressed ; 
Columbines, heartsease, picotees 
No more greet evening from the West, 
Nor lilies give their beauty to the night — 
Where are the roses of our lost delight ? 

Deep rooted, to the sun they glow 

In a new world's eternal Spring ; 

Low at our feet the tendrils cling, 

High as the Himalayan snow 

The birds among their branches sing ; 

From crag and strand and plain they grow, 

France, utmost Africa, the cold North Sea, 

Mesopotamia and Gallipoli. 

Let the neglected garden lie ! 
There is no need for English flowers, 
These, by a right divine, are ours, 
These bloom forever under every sky, 
Droop in no drought, thirst for no showers, 



8 ELEANOR ALEXANDER 

These by no frosts of Autumn die, 
Immortal loveliness for the bleak years, 
Fed with our heart's blood, watered with our tears. 

— Eleanor Alexander. 



HENRY ALLSOPP 9 



YOUNG AND OLD 

Young. What makes the dale so strange, my dear ? 

What makes the dale so strange ? 
Old. The men have gone from the dale, my dear, 

And that makes all the change. 

Young. The lanes and glens are still at night, 
No laughter or songs I hear. 

Old. Our lover-lads have marched to the fight 
And maidens are lonely, my dear. 

Young. The kine are slow to come to the call 
That once were all so quick. 

Old. They miss the voice known best of all, 
Of John or brother Dick. 

Young. And will the dale be always strange 
And dull and sad, my dear ? 

Old. Ay, lassie, we shall feel the change 
For many a mournful year. 

— Henry Allsopp. 



10 LIEUT. HERBERT ASQUITH 



THE FALLEN SUBALTERN 

The starshells float above, the bayonets glisten ; 
We bear our fallen friend without a sound ; 
Below the waiting legions lie and listen 
To us, who march upon their burial-ground. 

Wound in the flag of England, here we lay him ; 
The guns will flash and thunder o'er the grave ; 
What other winding sheet should now array him, 
What other music should salute the brave ? 

As goes the Sun-god in his chariot glorious, 
When all his golden banners are unfurled, 
So goes the soldier, fallen but victorious, 
And leaves behind a twilight in the world. 

And those who come this way in days hereafter 
Will know that here a boy for England fell, 
Who looked at danger with the eyes of laughter, 
And on the charge his days were ended well. 

One last salute ; the bayonets clash and glisten ; 
With arms reversed we go without a sound : 
One more has joined the men who lie and listen 
To us, who march upon their burial-ground. 

— Herbert Asquith. 



1915. 



KARLE WILSON BAKER 11 



UNSER GOTT 

They held a great prayer-service in Berlin, 

And augured German triumph from some words 

Said to be spoken by the Jewish God 

To Gideon, which signified that He 

Was staunchly partial to the Israelites. 

The aisles were thronged ; and in the royal box 

(I had it from a tourist who was there, 

Clutching her passport, anxious, like the rest), 

There sat the Kaiser, looking "very sad." 

And then they sang ; she said it shook the heart. 

The women sobbed ; tears salted bearded lips 

Unheeded ; and my friend looked back and saw 

A young girl crumple in her mother's arms. 

They carried out a score of them, she said, 

While German hearts, through bursting German 

throats 
Poured out, Ein Feste Burg 1st Unser Gott ! 

(Yea, " Unser Gott ! Our strength is Unser Gott ! 
Not that light-minded Bon Dieu of France ! ") 

I think we all have made our God too small. 
There was a young man, a good while ago, 



12 KARLE WILSON BAKER 

Who taught that doctrine . . . but they murdered 

him 
Because he wished to share the Jewish God 
With other folk. 

They are long-lived, these fierce 
Old hating Gods of nations ; but at last 
There surely will be spilled enough of blood 
To drown them all ! The deeps of sea and air, 
Of old the seat of gods, no more are safe, 
For mines and monoplanes. The Germans, now, 
Can surely find and rout the God of France 
With Zeppelins, or some slim mother's son 
Of Paris, or of Tours, or Brittany, 
Can drop a bomb into the Feste Burg, 
And, having crushed the source of German strength, 
Die happy in his blazing monoplane. 

Sad jesting ! If there be no God at all, 

Save in the heart of man, why, even so — 

Yea, all the more, — since we must make our God, 

Oh, let us make Him large enough for all, 

Or cease to prate of Him ! If kings must fight, 

Let them fight for their glory, openly, 

And plain men for their lands and for their homes, 

And heady youths, who go to see the fun, 

Blaspheme not God. True, maybe we might leave 

The God of Germany to some poor frau 

Who cannot go, who can but wait and mourn, 



KARLE WILSON BAKER 13 

Except that she will teach Him to her sons — 
A God quite scornful of the Slavic soul, 
And much concerned to keep Alsace-Lorraine. 
They should go godless, too — the poor, benumbed 
Crushed, anguished women, till their hearts can 

hold 
A greater Comforter ! 

(Yet it is hard 
To make Him big enough ! For me, I like 
The English and the Germans and the French, 
The Russians, too ; and Servians, I should think, 
Might well be very interesting to God. 
But, do the best I may, my God is white, 
And hardly takes a nigger seriously 
This side of Africa. Not those, at least 
Who steal my wood, and of a summer night 
Keep me awake with shouting, where they sit 
With monkey-like fidelity and glee 
Grinding through their well-oiled sausage-mill — 
The dead machinery of the white man's church — 
Raw jungle-fervor, mixed with scraps sucked dry 
Of Israel's old sublimities : not those. 
And when they threaten us, the Higher Race, 
Think you, which side is God's ? Oh, let us pray 
Lest blood yet spurt to wash that black skin white, 
As now it flows because a German hates 
A Cossack, and an Austrian a Serb !) 



14 KARLE WILSON BAKER 

What was it that he said so long ago, 
The young man who outgrew the Jewish God — 
" Not a sparrow f alleth — ? " Ah, God, God, 
And there shall fall a million murdered men ! 

— Karle Wilson Baker. 



HAROLD BEGBIE 15 



NEUTRAL? 

To the Humanity op America 

When men are told in years ahead 

How Fury forced the Belgian door 
And ravished maids, struck children dead, 

And fired the houses of the poor, 
Will none, if still that nation lives 

Our sires with blood and sweat begat, 
Ask with the pride your greatness gives, 

"What said America to that?" 

Your children — taught how Belgium stood 

In flames that once were called Louvain, 
And dashing from her eyes the blood 

Struck at her foe and struck again — 
Shall feel their hearts within them burn 

To know that righteous word you said ; 
God ! When the silent truth they learn, 

Surely your sons will hang the head. 

We ask not that of all your hosts 
One man, one sword be sacrificed : 

Your cousins guard these ancient coasts, 
Your kinsmen charge this Antichrist : 



16 HAROLD BEGBIE 

But we expect your mighty voice 

With judgment through the world to run, 

O land of freedom, make your choice, 
Are you for Belgium or the Hun ? 

We ask not that your shells should shriek 

Above the flaming hills we climb, 
But speak, O sons of Lincoln, speak ! 

Silence in such an hour is crime. 
Your children judge you if you stand 

In hearing of the Belgian cry, 
Not only with the folded hand, 

But with the cold, averted eye ! 

The soul has got its piercing steel, 

The heart its fierce consuming fire, 
Oh, make your voice like thunder peal, 

All nations of the earth inspire ! 
We know your heart for Belgium bleeds, 

But speak your soul, declare your mind, 
Speak till the sin-red tyrant heeds 

The voice of God and all mankind. 

— Harold Begbie. 



WILLIAM ROSE BEKET 17 



THE RED COUNTRY 

In the red country 

The sky flowers 

All day. 

Strange mechanical birds 

With struts of wire and glazed wings 

Cross the impassive sky 

Which burgeons ever and again 

With ephemeral unfolding flowers, 

White and yellow and brown, 

That spread and dissolve. 

And smaller rapid droning birds go by, 

And bright metallic bees whose sting is death. 

Behind the hills, 

Behind the whispering woods whose leaves are fall- 
ing 
Yellow and red to cover the red clay, 
Misshapen monsters squat with wide black maws 
Gulping smoke and belching flame. 
From the mirk reed beds of the age of coal, 
Wallowing out of their sleep in the earlier slime, 
They are resurrected and stagger forth to slay — 
The prehistoric Beasts we thought were dead. 



18 WILLIAM ROSE BEN&T 

They are blinded with long sleep, 

But men with clever weapons 

Goad them to fresh pastures. 

Beside still waters 

They drink of blood and neigh a horrible laughter, 

And their ponderous tread shakes happy cities 

down, 
And the thresh of their flail-like tails 
Makes acres smoulder and smoke 
Blackened of golden harvest. 

The Beasts are back, 

And men, in their spreading shadow, 

Inhale the odor of their nauseous breath. 

Inebriate with it they fashion other gods 

Than the gods of day-dream. 

Of iron and steel are little images 

Made of the Beasts. 

And men rush forth and fling themselves for ritual 

Before these gods, before the lumbering Beasts, — 

And some make long obeisance. 

Umber and violet flowers of the sky, 

The sun, like a blazing Mars, clanks across the 

blue 
And plucks you, to fashion into a nosegay 
To offer Venus, his old-time paramour. 
But now she shrinks 



WILLIAM ROSE BEN ft T 19 

And pales 

Like Cynthia, her more ascetic sister . . . 

Vulcan came to her arms in the grimy garb 

Of toil, he smelt of the forge and the racketing work- 
shop, 

But not of blood. 

And, if she smells these flowers, they bubble ruby 
blood 

That trickles between her fingers. 

Yet is a dream flowing over the red country, 

Yet is a light growing, for all the black furrows of the 

red country . . . 
The machines are foe or friend 
As the world desires. 
The Beasts shall sleep again. 
And in that sleep, when the land is twilight-still 
And men take thought among the frozen waves of 

the dead, 
The Sowers go forth once more, 
Sowers of vision, sowers of the seed 
Of peace or war. 
Shall it be peace indeed ? 
Great shadowy figures moving from hill to hill 
Of tangled bodies, with rhythmic stride and cowled 

averted head, 
What do you sow with hands funereal — 
New savageries imperial, 



20 WILLIAM ROSE BENET 

Unthinking pomps for arrogant, witless men ? 
Or seed for the people in strong democracy ? 
What do you see 

With your secret eyes, and sow for us, that we must 
reap again? 

— William Rose Benet. 



LAURENCE BIN YON 21 



FOR THE FALLEN 

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, 
England mourns for her dead across the sea. 
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, 
Fallen in the cause of the free. 

Solemn the drums thrill : Death august and royal 
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres. 
There is music in the midst of desolation 
And a glory that shines upon our tears. 

They went with songs to the battle, they were young, 
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow. 
They were stanch to the end against odds uncounted, 
They fell with their faces to the foe. 

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old : 
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. 
At the going down of the sun and in the morning 
We will remember them. 

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again ; 
They sit no more at familiar tables of home ; 
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time ; 
They sleep beyond England's foam. 



22 LAURENCE BIN YON 

But where our desires are and our hopes profound, 

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight, 

To the innermost heart of their own land they are 

known 
As the stars are known to the Night ; 

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust, 
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain ; 
As the stars that are starry in the time of our dark- 
ness, 
To the end, to the end, they remain. 

— Laurence Binyon. 



WILFRID BLAIR 23 



A BALLAD OF DEATHLESS DONS 
OR: 
"WHEN THE ASSAULT WAS INTENDED 
TO THE CITY" 

(In honor of an Oxford Corps composed of those con- 
cerning whom it may be said most truly, in Mr. Belloc's 
words, that they are 

" Dons admirable ! Dons of Might ! . . . 
Dons English, worthy of the land.") 



The Regulars fight with all their might, the Navy 

keeps the seas, 
The Terrier * sniffs on bridges and cliffs, wherever a 

foe might sneeze, 
K's keen recruit is learning to shoot, the Boy Scout 

scouteth still, — 
And after them all, the dons, the dons ! — the aged 

dons do drill ! 

1 Obsolete word signifying a mere voluntary fighter unfit 
even for adequate defence purposes. 



24 WILFRID BLAIR 

They know, they know how well things go on the 

Merton fields of France ; 
But the S.C.R.'s must be fields of Mars — they dare 

leave nought to chance ; 
"Louvain \" is the word, and their souls are stirred ; 

for they think of their matchless tuns, 
And the ground shall be dusted ere Oxford's crusted 

port shall be broached by Huns. 

II 

The proud Professors toe the line 

And turn to the left for right incline. 

Forgot, forgot are their divers lores 

In the patriot stress of forming fours. 

Their mortar-boards are a hive for bees 

(Which they often were) as they stand at ease. 

Though every morn they are wisdom's fount 

In matters which nowadays hardly count, 

Each afternoon each neophyte 

Gets totally mixed between left and right 

(And a don at maths, and a logic don 

Turn each to each and are pounced upon) . 

At the terrible voice of the tu — the sergeant 

Their gills go gules and their locks more argent. 

And still as the breath comes short, and the knees 

Wobble in places, and many a wheeze 

Is torn from the depth of complaining turns, 

Down the weak line the whisper comes : 



WILFRID BLAIR 25 

"Memento Louvain !" — or "Rheims, fiefivrjade I" 
" Oxford ! " they cry, " shall beer-swillers fleece thee ? " 
And still — though their breath comes yet more 

short — 
They drill like mad to preserve her port. 

Ill 

See, in the foremost rank, 

His brow with sudor dank, 

His gown unpipeclayed in his loyal hurry, 

Private Professor Gilbert Murray ! — 

Hear, oh, hear, 

With almost swooning ear, 

The sergeant (Chiron in disguise), 

With how sarcastic drawl he 

Damneth the eyes 

Of Private Prof. Eng. Lit. Sir Walter Raleigh ! — 

See yet again 

With uncontrolled pleasure 

There, marking time amain 

As with such feet as make a lyric measure, 

Like iEschylus upon the Marathon day, — 

Next to that nice ex-proctor, — 

Private and Poet Laureate Dr. 

Bridges, M.A. ! — 

And see — but let your eyes with pride be dim ! — 

Him who professes Art and Archaeology 

Standing as rear-rank man to him 

Of Anthropology. 



26 WILFRID BLAIR 

(Well knows the latter how to dodge, 

That bullets in no deadly place may lodge !) — 

Him of Eng. Law behold, 

Not overbold 

To reason why when sergeants bid him charge : 

Him of Greek History, him of Geography, 

All very fine arid large, 

This, swift to seize advantage of topography, 

That, to announce how ne'er a corps did train 

So well since Sparta went upon the wane. 

And there be others : 

A publisher and sundry heads of houses, 

Spurred by North Oxford spouses, 

Bidden go forth by yet more aged mothers ; 

And, standing desperately at attention 

(But looking forward to their tea and scones), 

Innumerable dons 

And parsons beyond mention. 

IV 

They are not afraid of the Boys' Brigade, for they've 

taken the kiddies' guns, 
Which shoot nohow — but they've learnt by now to 

depend on the end that stuns. 
And all the rules of the Final Schools combine in a 

splendid spur, 
When the Pyrrhic phalanx does right-about-turn 

and the order is "As you were !" 



WILFRID BLAIR 27 

Oh, K's recruit is learning to shoot, the Boy Scout 

scouteth still, — 
But after them all, the dons, the dons ! — the deathless 

dons do drill ! 
" Loumin!" is the word, and their souls are stirred; 

for they think of their matchless tuns, 
And the ground shall be dusted ere Oxford's crusted 

port shall be broached by Huns ! 

— Wilfrid Blair. 



28 H. W. BLISS 



"ANY FRIEND TO ANY FRIEND" 

Ev'n as I thought of you your soul had sped, 

Friend of old, happy, far-off boyhood days, 

And, as across the sea I turned my gaze, 

The soil of France with your brave blood was red ! 

Blame not the shears that slit the thin yarn thread. 

Though life be lost, immortal is the praise ! 

Would I were with you crowned with victory's 

bays, 
O Happy Warrior 'midst our English dead ! 

Yea ! God of Battles, what a time to die ! 
Thy Courts are echoing to the tuck of drum, 
The wide days flame with comet souls that fly 
Triumphant, at a bound, from Earth to Heaven, 
The nights ablaze, with their white passage riven, 
As, trailing clouds of glory, swift they come. 

— H . W. Bliss. 



MAXWELL BODENHEIM 29 



THE CAMP-FOLLOWER 

We spoke, the camp-follower and I. 

About us was a cold, pungent odor — 

Gun-powder, stale wine, wet earth, and the smell of 
thousands of men. 

She said it reminded her of the scent 

In the house of prostitutes she had lived in. 

About us were soldiers — hordes of scarlet women, 
stupidly, smilingly giving up their bodies 

To a putrid-lipped, chuckling lover — Death ; 

While their mistress in tinsel whipped them on. . . . 

She spoke of a woman she had known in Odessa, 

Owner of a huge band of girls, 

Who had pocketed their earnings for years, 

Only to be used, swindled and killed by some noble- 
man. . . . 

She said she thought of this grinning woman 

Whenever she saw an officer brought back from 
battle, dead. . . . 

And I sat beside her and wondered. 

— Maxwell Bodenheim. 



30 F. W. BOURDILLON 



HERE: AND THERE 

September, 1914 

HERE 

Soft benediction of September sun ; 
Voices of children, laughing as they run; 
Green English lawns, bright flowers and butterflies; 
And over all the blue embracing skies. 

THERE 

Tumult and roaring of the incessant gun; 
Dead men and dying, trenches lost and won ; 
Blood, mud, and havoc, bugles, shoutings, cries; 
And over all the blue embracing skies. 

— F. W. Bourdillon. 



ROBERT BRIDGES 31 



LORD KITCHENER 

Unflinching hero, watchful to foresee 

And face thy country's peril wheresoever, 

Directing war and peace with equal care, 

Till by long toil ennobled thou wert he 

Whom England call'd and bade "Set my arm free 

To obey my will and save my honour fair" — 

What day the foe presumed on her despair 

And she herself had trust in none but thee : 

Among Herculean deeds the miracle 

That mass'd the labour of ten years in one 

Shall be thy monument. Thy work is done 

Ere we could thank thee ; and the high sea swell 

Surgeth unheeding where thy proud ship fell 

By the lone Orkneys, ere the set of sun. 

— Robert Bridges. 
June 8, 1916. 



32 ALTER BRODY 



KARTUSHKIYA-BEROZA 

It is twelve years since I have been there — 

I was born there, 

In the little town, by the river — 

It all comes back to me now 

Reading in the newspaper : 

" The Germans have seized the bridge-head at Kartush- 
kiya-Beroza; 

The Russians are retreating in good order across the 
marshes; 

The town is inflames." 

Kartushkiya-Beroza ! 
Sweet-sounding, time-scented name — 
Smelling of wide-extending marshes of hay ; 
Smelling of cornfields ; 
Smelling of apple-orchards ; 
Smelling of cherry-trees in full blossom ; 
Smelling of all the pleasant recollections of my child- 
hood — 
Smelling of Grandmother's kitchen, 
Grandmother's freshly-baked dainties, 
Grandmother's plum-pudding — 
Kartushkiya-Beroza ! 



ALTER BRODY 33 



I see before me a lane running between two rows of 

straggling cottages — 
I cannot remember the name of the lane ; 
I do not know whether it has any name at all ; 
But I remember it was broad and unpaven and 

shaded with wide-branching chestnuts — 
And enters the market-place 
Just a few houses after my Grandfather's — 
Kartushkiya-Beroza ! 



I can see it even now 

My Grandfather's house — 

On the lane, to the right, as you come from the mar- 
ket-place ; 

A big, hospitable frame building — 

Big like my Grandfather's own heart, 

And hospitable like Grandmother's smile — 

I can see it even now, 

With the white-pillared porch in the centre and the 
sharp-gabled roof 

Pierced with little windows ; 

And the great quadrangular garden behind it ; 

And the tall fence surrounding the garden ; 

And the old well in the corner of the garden ; 

With the bucket-lift 

Rising over the fence — 

Kartiishkiva-Beroza ! 



34 ALTER BRODY 



I can see him even now, 

My Grandfather — 

Bending over me, tall and sad-eyed and thought- 
ful- 
Lifting me up and seating me on his knees 

Lovingly, 

And listening to all my childish questions and con- 
fessions ; 

Pardoning, admonishing, remonstrating — 

Satisfying my interrogative soul with good-humored 
indulgence — 

And my Grandmother, 

Dear little woman ! 

I can never dissociate her from plum-pudding and 
apple dumplings, 

And raisin-cakes and almond cakes and crisp potato- 
pancakes 

And the smell of fish frying on the fire — 

And then there is my cousin, Miriam, 

Who lived in the yellow house across the lane — 

A freckle-faced, cherry-eyed little girl with a puckered- 
up nose. 

I was very romantic about her ; 

And then there is my curse, my rival at school, my 
arch-enemy — 

Jacob, 

The synagogue sexton's boy, 

On whom I was always warring — 



ALTER BRODY 35 



God knows on what battlefield he must be lying 

now! 
And then there is Nathan and Joseph and Berel and 

Solomon 
And Ephraim, the baker's boy, 
And Baruch and Gershen and Mendel 
And long-legged, sandy-haired Emanuel who fell into 

the pond with me that time, 
While we were skating on the ice — 
Kartushkiya-Beroza ! 

I can see myself even now 

In the lane on a summer's day, 

Cap in hand, chasing after dragon-flies — 

Suddenly, near by, sounds the noise of drums and 

bugles — 
I know what that means ! 
Breathlessly I dash up the lane — 
It is the regiment quartered in the barracks at the 

end of the town, in its annual parade on the 

highway — 
How I would wish to be one of those gray-coated 

heroes ! 
I watch them eager-eyed — 
And run after them until they reach the Gentile 

Quarter — 
And then I turn back — 
Kartushkiya-Beroza ! 



36 ALTER BRODY 



I am in the market-place — 

At a Fair ; 

The market-place is a heaving mass of carts and 

horses and oxen ; 
The oxen are lowing, the horses are neighing, the 

peasants are cursing in a dozen different dia- 
lects — 
I am in Grandfather's store, 
On the lower end of the market-place, right opposite 

the public well — 
The store is full of peasants and peasant women, 

bargaining at the top of their voices ; 
The men are clad in rough sheepskin coats and fur 

caps; 
The women are gay in bright-colored cottons and 

wear red kerchiefs around their heads ; 
My Grandfather is standing behind the counter 

measuring out rope to some peasants ; 
Grandmother is cutting a strip of linen for a peasant 

woman, chaffering with another one at the same 

time, about the price of a pair of sandals — 
And I am sitting there, behind the counter, on a 

sack of flour, 
Playing with my black-eyed little cousin — 



Kartfishkiya-Beroza ! 
Karttishkiya-Beroza ! 
It comes back to me suddenly 



ALTER BRODY 37 



That I am sitting here, with a newspaper in my hand, 

Reading : 

" The Germans have seized the bridge-head at Kartush- 

kiya-Beroza; 
The Russians are retreating in good order across the 

marshes; 
The town is inflames!" 

— Alter Brody. 



38 RUPERT BROOKE 



THE SOLDIER 

If I should die, think only this of me : 

That there's some corner of a foreign field 
That is for ever England. There shall be 

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed ; 
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, 

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, 
A body of England's, breathing English air, 

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. 

And think, this heart, all evil shed away, 
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less 

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England 
given ; 
Her sights and sounds ; dreams happy as her day ; 
And laughter, learnt of friends ; and gentleness, 
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. 

— Rupert Brooke. 

(A sublieutenant in the volunteer Naval Reserve, 
Rupert Brooke died from sunstroke on his way to the 
Dardanelles on April 23, 1915, and was buried in the 
Greek island of Skyros.) 



LORD BURGHCLERE 39 



AFTERMATH 

Yes, he is gone, there is the message, see ! 

Slain by a Prussian bullet as he led 

The men that loved him — dying, cheered them 

on — 
My son, my eldest son. So be it, God ! 

This is no time for tears, no time to mourn, 
No time for sombre draperies of woe. 
Let the aggressors weep ! for they have sinned 
The sin of Satan. Lust of power and pride, 
Mean envy of their neighbors' weal, a plot 
Hatched amidst glozing smiles and prate of peace 
Through the false years ; until the Day, the Day 
When all this worship at the Devil's feet 
Should win the world. Ay, let them weep ! 

But we 
With eyes undimmed march on; our mourning 

robes 
Be-jewelled by the deeds of those that die, 
Lustre on lustre, till no sable patch 
Peeps through their brilliance. 

In the years to come, 
When we have done our work, and God's own peace, 



40 LORD BURGHCLERE 

The Peace of Justice, Mercy, Righteousness, 
Like the still radiance of a summer's dawn, 
With tranquil glory floods a troubled world ; 
Why then, perhaps, in the old hall at home, 
Where once I dreamed my eldest-born should stand 
The master, as I stand the master now, 
Our eyes, my wife, shall meet and gleam, and mark 
Niched on the walls in sanctity of pride, 
Hal's sword, Dick's medal, and the cross he won 
Yet never wore. That is the time for tears, 
Drawn from a well of love deep down ; deep down, 
Deep as the mystery of immortal souls, 
That is the time for tears ; not now, not now ! 

— Burghclere. 



DANA BURNETT 41 



THE RETURN 

Home across the clover 

When the war was over 

Came the young men slowly with an air of being old, 

On a morning blue and gold 

Through the weed-grown meadow-places 

Marched young soldiers with old faces, 

Marched the columns of the Emperor with dull, 

bewildered eyes, 
And the day was like a rose upon the skies ; 
But they feared both light and life, 
Feared the aftermath of strife. 
Slow they came — 

Now that it was over — 
Silent and sick and lame, 

Home across the clover. 

A woman knelt in a garden by the road, 

Patting a little mound of earth 
With aimless hands. Along the highway flowed 

The gray tide, while the day was at its birth. 
She heard the drums, looked up, half smiled : 

"Why do you march," she said, "and play at 
soldiers ? 



42 DANA BURNET 



There's none to laugh at you — no little child ! 

Not one. They've all gone back to sleeping." 

She fell to awful weeping. 

"Why do you play at soldiers?" 
Then dropped down 

To pat the little grave. The line went on and on 
into the town. 

They saw it first in the city's eyes, 

Old men grouped by their fright, ran here and there 
In startled herds, with shrill unmeaning cries. 

And there was white in every woman's hair, 
And when a window yielded them a face 

'Twas like a flower blasted by the sun; 

Children there were none. 
The world seemed robbed of joyousness and grace, 

A young girl with a head of snow 
Sat weaving garlands in the market-place 

With hands unearthly slow, 
As though her toil must be 
The very measure of eternity. 

A boy ran from the ranks, stooped, touched her brow ; 
" M argot, M argot ! Is it thou f " 
She did not glance up at the white-faced lad. 

Deep in the gray line rang a sudden shout : 
" They're mad ! They're mad ! " 

" Silence, you dogs, until you're mustered out. 
Forward, to greet the Emperor /" 



DANA BURNET 43 



The line 
Wavered and moaned and stumbled through the 
town 
Like some dark serpent with a broken spine. 
Before the palace gate, in cloak and crown, 
A shriveled figure sat with shaking hands, 
Forming toy soldiers into various bands. 
A figure in a jeweled diadem, 

Who, as the swords leaped with a ringing noise, 
Lifted his wasted eyes and looked at them. 
"Ah I" said the Emperor, and smiled : 
"More toys!" 

— Dana Burnet. 



44 AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR 



KITCHENER'S MARCH 

Not the muffled drums for him 
Nor the wailing of the fife. 
Trumpets blaring to the charge 
Were the music of his life. 
Let the music of his death 
Be the feet of marching men ; 
Let his heart a thousandfold 
Take the field again. 

Of his patience, of his calm, 
Of his quiet faithfulness, 
England, raise your hero's cairn 
He is worthy of no less. 
Stone by stone, in silence laid, 
Singly, surely, let it grow. 
He whose living was to serve, 
Would have had it so. 

There's a body drifting down 
For the mighty sea to keep. 
There's a spirit cannot die 
While a heart is left to leap 
In the land he gave his all, 
Steel alike to praise and hate. 



AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR 45 



He has saved the life he spent, 
Death has struck too late. 

Not the muffled drums for him. 
Nor the wailing of the fife — 
Trumpets blaring to the charge 
Were the music of his life. 
Let the music of his death 
Be the feet of marching men ! 
Let his heart a thousandfold 
Take the field again ! 

— Amelia Josephine Burr. 



46 WILFRED CAMPBELL 



LANGEMARCK AT YPRES 

This is the ballad of Langemarck, 

A story of glory and might ; 
Of the vast Hun horde, and Canada's part 

In the great, grim fight. 

It was April fair on the Flanders Fields, 

But the dreadest April then, 
That ever the years, in their fateful flight, 

Had brought to this world of men. 

North and east, a monster wall, 

The mighty Hun ranks lay, 
With fort on fort, and iron-ringed trench, 

Menacing, grim and gray. 

And south and west, like a serpent of fire, 

Serried the British lines, 
And in between, the dying and dead, 
And the stench of blood, and the trampled mud, 

On the fair, sweet Belgian vines. 

And far to the eastward, harnessed and taut, 

Like a scimitar, shining and keen, 
Gleaming out of that ominous gloom, 

Old France's hosts were seen. 



WILFRED CAMPBELL 47 

When out of the grim Hun lines one night, 

There rolled a sinister smoke ; — 
A strange, weird cloud, like a pale, green shroud, 

And death lurked in its cloak. 

On a fiend-like wind it curled along 

Over the brave French ranks, 
Like a monster tree its vapors spread, 

In hideous, burning banks 
Of poisonous fumes that scorched the night 

With their sulphurous demon danks. 

And men went mad with horror, and fled 
From that terrible strangling death, 

That seemed to sear both body and soul 
With its baleful, flaming breath. 

Till even the little dark men of the south, 

Who feared neither God nor man, 
Those fierce, wild fighters of Afric's steppes, 

Broke their battalions and ran ; — 

Ran as they never had run before, 

Gasping, and fainting for breath ; 
For they knew 'twas no human foe that slew ; 

And that hideous smoke meant death. 

Then red in the reek of that evil cloud, 
The Hun swept over the plain ; 



48 WILFRED CAMPBELL 

And the murderer's dirk did its monster work, 
Mid the scythe-like shrapnel rain. 

Till it seemed that at last the brute Hun hordes 

Had broken that wall of steel ; 
And that soon, through this breach in the freeman's 
dyke, 

His trampling hosts would wheel ; — 

And sweep to the south in ravaging might, 

And Europe's peoples again 
Be trodden under the tyrant's heel, 

Like herds, in the Prussian pen. 

But in that line on the British right, 

There massed a corps amain, 
Of men who hailed from a far west land 

Of mountain and forest and plain ; 

Men new to war and its dreadest deeds, 

But noble and staunch and true ; 
Men of the open, East and West, 
Brew of old Britain's brew. 

These were the men out there that night, 

When Hell loomed close ahead ; 
Who saw that pitiful, hideous rout, 

And breathed those gases dread ; 
While some went under and some went mad ; 

But never a man there fled. 



WILFRED CAMPBELL 49 

For the word was "Canada," theirs to fight, 

And keep on fighting still ; — 
Britain said, fight, and fight they would, 

Though the Devil himself in sulphurous mood, 
Came over that hideous hill. 

Yea, stubborn, they stood, that hero band, 

Where no soul hoped to live ; 
For five, 'gainst eighty, thousand men, 

Were hopeless odds to give. 

Yea, fought they on ! 'Twas Friday eve, 
When that demon gas drove down ; 

'Twas Saturday eve that saw them still 
Grimly holding their own ; 

Sunday, Monday, saw them yet, 

A steadily lessening band, 
With "no surrender" in their hearts, 

But the dream of a far-off land, 

Where mother and sister and love would weep 
For the hushed heart lying still ; — 

But never a thought but to do their part, 
And work the Empire's will. 

Ringed round, hemmed in, and back to back, 

They fought there under the dark, 
And won for Empire, God and Right, 

At grim, red Langemarck. 

E 



50 WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Wonderful battles have shaken this world, 

Since the Dawn-God overthrew Dis ; 
Wonderful struggles of right against wrong, 
Sung in the rhymes of the world's great song, 
But never a greater than this. 

Bannockburn, Inkerman, Balaclava, 

Marathon's god-like stand ; 
But never a more heroic deed, 
And never a greater warrior breed, 

In any warman's land. 

This is the ballad of Langemarck, 

A story of glory and might ; 
Of the vast Hun horde, and Canada's part 

In the great, grim fight. 

— Wilfred Campbell. 

Editorial Note: A son of Mr. Wilfred Campbell, the 
poet, is now fighting at St. Eloi. He is Capt. Basil Camp- 
bell, of the Second Pioneers. 



PATRICK R. CHALMERS 51 



GUNS OF VERDUN 

(Reprinted by the special permission of the proprietors 
of Punch.) 

Guns of Verdun point to Metz 
From the plated parapets ; 
Guns of Metz grin back again 
O'er the fields of fair Lorraine. 

Guns of Metz are long and grey 
Growling through a summer day ; 
Guns of Verdun, grey and long, 
Boom an echo of their song. 

Guns of Metz to Verdun roar, 
"Sisters, you shall foot the score;" 
Guns of Verdun say to Metz, 
"Fear not, for we pay our debts." 

Guns of Metz they grumble, "When?" 
Guns of Verdun answer then, 
"Sisters, when to guard Lorraine 
Gunners lay you East again !" 

— Patrick R. Chalmers. 



52 ANNIE VIVANTI CHARTRES 



THE BROKEN ROSE 

TO KING ALBERT 

Shy, youthful, silent — and misunderstood 

In the white glare of Kinghood thou didst stand. 

The sceptre in thy hand 

Seemed but a flower the Fates had tossed to thee, 

And thou wert called, perchance half -scornfully, 

Albert the Good. 

To-day thou standest on a blackened grave, 
Thy broken sword still lifted to the skies. 
Thy pure and fearless eyes 
Gaze into Death's grim visage unappalled 
And by the storm-swept nations thou art called 
Albert the Brave. 

Tossed on a blood-red sea of rage and hate 

The frenzied world rolls forward to its doom. 

But high above the gloom 

Flashes the fulgent beacon of thy fame, 

The nations thou hast saved exalt thy name — 

Albert the Great ! 



ANNIE VIVANTI CHARTRES 53 

Albert the good, the brave, the great, thy land 

Lies at thy feet, a crushed and morient rose 

Trampled and desecrated by thy foes. 

One day a greater Belgium will be born, 

But what of this dead Belgium wracked and torn ? 

What of this rose flung out upon the sand? . . . 

Behold ! Afar where sky and waters meet 
A white-robed Figure walketh on the sea. 
(Peace goes before Him and her face is sweet.) 
As once He trod the waves of Galilee 
He comes again — the tumult sinks to rest, 
The stormy waters shine beneath His feet. 
He sees the dead rose lying in the sand, 
He lifts the dead rose in His holy hand 
And lays it at His breast. 

O broken rose of Belgium, thou art blest ! 

— Annie Vivanti Chartres. 



54 GILBERT K. CHESTERTON 



THE WIFE OF FLANDERS 

Low and brown barns thatched and repatched and 
tattered 

Where I had seven sons until to-day, 
A little hill of hay your spur has scattered . . . 

This is not Paris. You have lost the way. 

You, staring at your sword to find it brittle, 
Surprised at the surprise that was your plan, 

Who, shaking and breaking barriers not a little, 
Find never more the death-door of Sedan. 

Must I for more than carnage call you claimant, 
Paying you a penny for each son you slay ? 

Man, the whole globe in gold were no repayment 
For what you have lost. And how shall I 
repay ? 

What is the price of that red spark that caught 
me 
From a kind farm that never had a name ? 
What is the price of that dead man they brought 
me? 
For other dead men do not look the same. 



GILBERT K. CHESTERTON 55 

How should I pay for one poor graven steeple 
Whereon you shattered what you shall not know, 

How should I pay you, miserable people ? 
How should I pay you everything you owe ? 

Unhappy, can I give you back your honor ?] 
Though I forgave would any man forget ? 

While all the great green land has trampled on her 
The treason and terror of the night we met. 

Not any more in vengeance or in pardon 
An old wife bargains for a bean that's hers. 

You have no word to break ; no heart to harden. 
Ride on and prosper. You have lost your spurs. 

— Gilbert K. Chesterton. 



56 THE REV. PHILIP BYARD CLAYTON 



THEY HELD THEIR GROUND 

Grey broke the light of that Sabbath dawn 

On the English pickets, 
Gold rose the sun o'er the unreaped corn 

And the Hainault thickets. 
Through the park at home, where the young rooks 

caw'd, 
And the dew lay deep on the churchyard sward, 
Went Mary, arisen to meet her Lord — 
While Mons must be held for England. 

Clear broke the day as the bugles blew, — 

Who shall hear them to-morrow ? 
Sternly the thunder of Edom grew, 

And the tally of sorrow. 
Right wing, left wing, centre attacked, 
Legions launched like a cataract, 
But the English stood to their plighted pact, — 
Yes, Mons must be held for England ! 

Pitiless noon, when the screaming shard 

Left the air acrid. 
But they looked on Malplaquet and Oudenarde, 

So the soil was sacred. 



THE REV. PHILIP BYARD CLAYTON 57 

And they thought (who knows?) on some Surrey 

lane, 
On some mother's kiss, or some school refrain, 
And they tightened the girths of their saddles 

again, 
Since Mons must be held for England. 

Red set the sun in the angry skies 

Ere the fight was over. 
Fierce were the beams of the cruisers' eyes 

By the cliffs of Dover. 
News — ill news — for Namur is lost ! 
No need for the Eagle to count the cost. 
But Mons was the merest hill at the most, 
Yet Mons had been held for England. 

Lord, Who hast known what a slain Son is, 

Judge Thou their labor ! 
Lifted they eyes to the vanities ? 

Deceived their neighbor ? 
Sift Thou the souls that are utterly Thine, 
Clean are those cold hands of covert design ; 
Silent they lie in their last long line, 
Who died to hold Mons for England ! 

— Philip Byard Clayton. 



58 LINCOLN COLCORD 



VISION OF WAR 



1. 



I went out into the night of quiet stars ; 

I looked up at the wheeling heavens, at the myste- 
rious firmament ; 

I thought of the awful distances out there, of the 
incredible magnitudes, of space and silence and 
eternity ; 

I thought of man, his life, his love, his dream ; 

I thought of his body, how it is born and grows, and 
of his spirit that cannot be explained. 

All about me slept the land in peace, and nature 

slept in deep serenity ; 
An off-shore wind had died at sunset, the bay was 

calm and golden as twilight fell ; 
Not a cloud broke the clear and tender blue of the 

evening sky. 
Then the quiet stars came out, the air grew cool with 

the breath of night ; 
A land-breeze flurried, wafting the odor of damp 

woods and late hay-fields ; 
A gentle breeze, that scarcely turned the sleeping 

leaves. 



LINCOLN COLCORD 59 

I walked on through the village, I saw the lights go 
out in houses as men and women prepared for 
bed; 

Safe and secure, the homes of my neighbors rested 
in the shadow of tall trees, that had been 
growing there peacefully a long time ; 

I passed on into the country, crickets were singing 
in the fields, fireflies were glimmering in the 
pastures among low growths of spruce and 
pine; 

I mounted a hill, high overhead brooded the ma- 
jestic and silent heavens ; 

On the eastern horizon a great bright star arose, 
casting a track across the bay. 

I have never seen the world so calm, the air so clear 

and still ; 
I have never known an hour so full of quietness. 

2. 

Hour of the War ! 

Now, now — and here — on this same earth, and 

under this same sky ! 
Now ! — Now ! — The War ! — The War ! — The 

War! 

Night, and a sodden field, and starlight over all, 
And on the ground the bodies of dead men lying ; 



60 LINCOLN COLCORD 

Tumbled, broken, grotesque, in attitudes unhuman, 
in lumpish, swollen heaps, they lie, 

Where death suddenly snatched them up and flung 
them down. 

A strange, dark, silent scene ; 

Here passed the awful charge three days ago ; 

Here met the choking volley, shattered out and fell. 

Three days and nights they have been lying here ; 
No help could reach them, cast between the battle 

lines ; 
No help is needed now. 

Slowly above their heads the conflict wore itself 

away ; 
Calm settled on the shaking, riven air ; 
The sharp cries of the wounded stopped one by one, 

their groans grew fainter ; 
A few crawled off — the others lay as they had 

fallen, under the sun and stars ; 
Then the third night, and peace at last, the quietness 

restored. 

3. 

Listen ! — could one be living ? — come this way ; 

Here where a score of bodies are drawn mysteriously 

together, 
A turning face catches a gleam of starlight, 

A hand moves, winnowing the air. 



LINCOLN COLCORD 61 

" Water ! " — No use, no use — too late ; 

His breast is shot away — don't move him — God, 

how he bled ! 
What is it, comrade? A letter — make a light: 
" We have not heard since you left home. ... 7 cannot 

bear it. . . . " 
Turn the sheet over: — "Oh, my dear, be careful !" 
Here is the signature — the address — a distant 

village ; 
I have been there — an ancient, quiet village of the 

north, 
Fronting the open sea. 
Yes, comrade, I will write — he smiles : 
To lie here, thinking, suffering, remembering ; 
To be left to die alone ! 

4. 

But not alone : 

Passing brother, you have yet a grim companion; 

Along the edge of the thicket just now, as I went to 
the brook down there for water, 

I stumbled over something that must have been left 
from the charge a week ago : 

A body that held the remnants of a man. 

He had dragged himself to the brook, he lay im- 
bedded in tall waving grass ; 

His stomach had been ripped open by shrapnel, 
maggots were heaving in the wound ; 



62 LINCOLN COLCORD 

(Did you know that a man could live while maggots 
formed in his flesh ?) 

His muscles twitched convulsively, he was barely 
conscious ; 

He did not notice the match I struck, his eyes were 
filmed over, he would not drink ; 

The region that he inhabited was an unknown, un- 
imaginable land. 

(At home, a woman waits for news of him : 
It is well that she can never hear.) 

5. 

Pass on, pass on! Behold the mobilization of 

armies ; 
The men leaving their work at the counter and 

factory, dropping the plow where it stands in 

the field, 
Flocking together, filling the towns, saying good-by 

to wife and children, taking a last look around ; 
(Our country calls ! Our country, and our King !) 

Behold the flinging forward of nations in the wake of 

armies ; 
The marvellous, massive engines, the enormous 

paraphernalia ; 
The powerful mechanical conveyances, the long 

lines of them carrying supplies ; 



LINCOLN COLCORD 63 

The immense stores of provisions at the depot, the 
stacks of clothing and other necessities, the 
huge piles of fodder and grain for the horses ; 

The flaring illuminations, the sweating gangs work- 
ing beneath them, ceaselessly receiving, sorting, 
distributing ; 

The field guns, the heavy artillery, their ponderous 
steady movements through the villages ; 

The stout-wheeled wagons full of dangerous, costly 
ammunition ; 

The roaring trains, arriving and departing, some 
laden with supplies, some packed with hu- 
manity, alive or dead; 

The vast and systematic commissariat, the grist of 
war. 

6. 

Behold the columns, advancing, advancing, ad- 
vancing ; 

Tramping steadily onward, seen behind on the hills, 
and seen ahead to the distant turn of the 
road; 

Streaming along the valleys, gaining and crossing 
the passes, flanking the mountain ranges, net- 
ting the land with a lethal web ; 

Accoutrements flashing and jangling, thunder of 
tread, regular motion swaying and undulating 
the lines ; 



64 LINCOLN COLCORD 

Countless miles of indomitable marching men; 
(Our country calls ! Our country, and our King !) 

Behold the front, the million-manned intrenchments, 

continent-spanning ; 
The infinite detail of day-works and night-works ; 
The burrowing, roofing, screening, the placing of 

barbed-wire entanglements ; 
The stealthy advance in the darkness, the hasty 

and desperate digging-in under fire ; 
The shifting and rushing forward of artillery, the 

lashing of horses, the running of wires for 

communication ; 
The searchlights feeling afar through the night, like 

cold white fingers ; 
The life of the trenches, after all is completed ; 
The hidden underground chambers, the well-con- 
cealed passages, the bomb-proof quarters; 
The men laughing and singing, some of them making 

music on simple instruments, some playing 

cards, some smoking and talking ; 
Passing backwards and forwards, eating, sleeping, 

fighting, or taking their leisure, all out of sight, 

in tunnels and cavities below the surface : 
A serious new game for earnest, grown-up children. 

(Hark, hark ! Aloft — look up ; 
A great bird sails across the sky, with loud and 
strident whirr of wings ; 



LINCOLN COLCORD 65 

Terribly swift — a moment — it is gone. 
Can men be passing there on high, so swiftly through 
the air?) 

7. 

Pass on ! Behold the charge ; 

(Ready ! Run low ! Run wide ! 

Our country calls ! Our country , and our King !) 

Over the open fields, trampling the crops, dropping 
to fire, rising to run ; 

(Some never rising, never again to rise ;) 

Straggling, thinning, wavering, (God, it is hopeless ! 
— it is too much !) 

Onward, onward pressing, rushing and driving on- 
ward; 

(I did not know that men could be so Teckless and 
brave !) 

Mounting the opposite slope, cutting their way 
through entanglements ; 

Gaining the outer trenches, (deadly work for the 
bayonets !) 

Shouting, cursing, groaning, stabbing, wrestling, 
clubbing with butts, fighting at last with bare 
fists; 

Annihilating the enemy, ' capturing the posi- 
tion! 

(Victory ! Victory ! Victory f 

Our country calls ! Our country, and our King !) 



66 LINCOLN COLCORD 

(On the open field lie many huddled shapes ; 

The wounded are stirring feebly out there, like men 

awaking from a violent dream ; 
They lift their heads, they stretch their arms, they 

struggle to rise on their elbows ; 
They sit up, staring around — they crawl like snails 

among the crops ; 
A screaming horse dashes athwart the line, dragging 

his entrails on the ground.) 

8. 

Behold the ships at sea ; 

A long and weary time they had been waiting, con- 
stantly on the alert, nerves strained to breaking ; 

In smothering, foggy weather, in gloomy days, in 
pitch-black nights, in wild and desperate gales ; 

Anxious for battle, longing to sight the enemy, 
every one on the lookout, chafing and growling ; 

Anything, anything, boys, to end this tedious 
monotony ! 

(Maybe an unseen deliverer is at hand.) 

The captain was walking the bridge that morning, 
the crew were at breakfast, the navigating 
officer was winding his chronometers ; 

Suddenly, from forward, a frantic cry ! A man runs 
aft, pointing to windward ; 

The captain whips out his glasses, scans the horizon ; 



LINCOLN COLCORD 67 

For a while, he does not pick up a little white streak 

on the water, not very far away, drawing 

rapidly nearer ; 
A streak like the wake of a shark's fin, cutting along 

on the weather bow. 
He sees it ! Quick, to the signal ! Stop ! Full 

speed astern ! 
Over, there, with the helm ! 

Too late, too late, captain of ship and lives ; 

Away from the little wake springs a broader wake; 

A murderous fish drives straight towards you, churn- 
ing the water as he goes. 

Close compartment doors ! — the last command ; 

Then to the end of the bridge, and stand there 
waiting ; 

Press tight the lips, fold the arms on the breast, 
throw back the head : 

Below, along the weather rail, a line of men stands 
silently, watching death come ; 

(Our country calls ! Our country, and our King !) 

A whitish object skims on the surface of the blue 

sea; 
The torpedo strikes below the magazine ; 
The ship is instantly blown in two — she sinks like 

lead; 
A faint cheer finds no listener but God. 



68 LINCOLN COLCORD 

A few men struggle on the water, where she went 

down; 
They cling for a while to fragments of wreckage ; 
There is no help in sight — they cannot be saved. 

(Down in the close, tight shell — in the unseen, 

mysterious vessel, 
Crouching in a dim chamber, in utter silence, 

wrapped in impenetrable privacy, apart from 

life, cut off from world of land and sea, 
A man sits, breathing hard, clenching his hands; 
Far above him, where sunlight strikes on breaking 

wave, a secret eye looks out, 
A secret mirror throws down to him the story there ; 
One long, intense, absorbing glance — then to the 

signal stretches out his hand ; 
Turning away, as darkly as she came, the submarine 

speeds homeward, 
Leaving the sea to seal her work and bury her dead.) 

9. 

Behold! Hour of the War ! 

Life everywhere flowing in strange new channels ! 

The world aroused, awakened ! The silence rent ! 
Peace shattered and overthrown ! 

The well-ordered conventions rudely broken up ! 
The illusions dissipated ! The motives sud- 
denly disclosed ! 



LINCOLN COLCORD 69 

Men face to face with nature, death, and pain ! 
The elemental shown ! And dim and far, the 
truth appearing ! 

The hovering dream ! The distant and divine con- 
ception ! 

(I sing no battles lost, retreating armies : 

O, I tell you, in this campaign there are no defeats ! 

O, I tell you, the retreating and advancing armies 
are equally triumphant ! 

O, I tell you, the lost battles contribute as much as 
the battles won, to the sure result of this cam- 
paign ! 

Victory ! Victory ! Victory ! 

Our country calls I Our country, and our King !) 

10. 

While about me sleeps the land in peace, while men 
and women prepare for bed ; 

While the land-breeze flurries, wafting a scent of 
autumn woods and fallen leaves ; 

While the crickets sing in the fields, and fireflies 
glimmer among low spruce and pine ; 

While the bright star rises, casting a track across 
the bay ; 

While the majestic heavens wheel onward, over- 
looking space and time ; 

While the still air drops down its quietness like love. 

— Lincoln Colcord. 



70 ALICE CORBIN 



FALLEN 

He was wounded and he fell in the midst of hoarse 

shouting. 
The tide passed, and the waves came and whispered 

about his ankles. 
Far off he heard a cock crow — children laughing, 
Rising at dawn to greet the storm of petals 
Shaken from apple-boughs ; he heard them cry, 
And turned again to find the breast of her, 
And sank confused with a little sigh . . . 
Thereafter water running, and a voice 
That seemed to stir and flutter through the trenches 
And set dead lips to talking . . . 

Wreckage was mingled with the storm of petals . . . 

He felt her near him, and the weight dropped off — 
Suddenly . . . 

— Alice Corbin. 



W. L. COURTNEY 71 



BY THE NORTH SEA 

Death and Sorrow and Sleep : 
Here where the slow waves creep, 

This is the chant I hear, 
The chant of the measureless deep. 

What was Sorrow to me 
Then, when the young life free 

Thirsted for joys of earth, 
Far from the desolate sea ? 

What was Sleep but a rest, 
Giving to youth the best 

Dreams from the ivory gate, 
Visions of God manifest ? 

What was death but a tale 
Told to faces grown pale, 

Worn or wasted with years — 
A meaningless thing to the hale ? 

Death and Sorrow and Sleep : 
Now their sad message I keep, 

Tossed on the wet wind's breath, 
The chant of the measureless deep. 

— W. L. Courtney. 



72 CHARLOTTE HOLMES CRAWFORD 



VIVE LA FRANCE! 

Fkanceline rose in the dawning gray, 
And her heart would dance though she knelt to pray, 
For her man Michel had holiday, 
Fighting for France. 

She offered her prayer by the cradle-side, 
And with baby palms folded in hers she cried : 
" If I have but one prayer, dear, crucified 
Christ — save France ! 

" But if I have two, then, by Mary's grace, 
Carry me safe to the meeting place, 
Let me look once again on my dear love's face, 
Save him for France !" 

She crooned to her boy : "Oh, how glad he'll be, 
Little three-months old, to set eyes on thee ! 
For, ' Rather than gold, would I give/ wrote he, 
'A son to France/ 

" Come, now, be good, little stray sauterelle, 
For we're going by-by to thy papa Michel, 
But I'll not say where for fear thou wilt tell, 
Little pigeon of France ! 



CHARLOTTE HOLMES CRAWFORD 73 

" Six days' leave and a year between ! 
But what would you have ? In six days clean, 
Heaven was made," said Franceline, 
"Heaven and France." 

She came to the town of the nameless name, 
To the marching troops in the street she came, 
And she held high her boy like a taper flame 
Burning for France. 

Fresh from the trenches and gray with grime, 
Silent they march like a pantomime ; 
" But what need of music ? My heart beats time — 
Vive la France!" 

His regiment comes. Oh, then where is he ? 
" There is dust in my eyes, for I cannot see, — 
Is that my Michel to the right of thee, 
Soldier of France?" 

Then out of the ranks a comrade fell, — 
" Yesterday — 'twas a splinter of shell — 
And he whispered thy name, did thy poor Michel, 
Dying for France." 

The tread of the troops on the pavement throbbed 
Like a woman's heart of its last joy robbed, 
As she lifted her boy to the flag, and sobbed : 
"Vive la France!" 

— Charlotte Holmes Crawford. 



74 LORD CREWE 



A HARROW GRAVE IN FLANDERS 

Heke in the marshland, past the battered bridge, 

One of a hundred grains untimely sown, 
Here, with his comrades of the hard-won ridge 
He rests, unknown. 

His horoscope had seemed so plainly drawn, 

School triumphs, earned apace in work and play ; 
Friendships at will ; then love's delightful dawn 
And mellowing day. 

Home fostering hope ; some service to the State ; 

Benignant age ; then the long tryst to keep 
Where in the yew-tree shadow congregate 
His fathers sleep. 

Was here the one thing needful to distil 

From life's alembic, through this holier fate, 
The man's essential soul, the hero-will ? 
We ask ; and wait. 

— Crewe. 



GERALD H. CROW 75 



WHEN THEY HAVE MADE AN END 

When they have made an end 
Of their importunate crying over you 

"God speed/' and "God defend," 
And time is swift and there is nought to do 
But match with wilder hope our wild despair ; 

When there is quiet, bend 
Your lips to mine, and in the darkness there 

Wish me good courage, friend. 

— Gerald H. Crow. 



76 WALTER BE LA MARE 



"HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE" 

Nay, nay, sweet England, do not grieve ! 

Not one of these poor men who died 
But did within his soul believe 

That death for thee was glorified. 

Ever they watched it hovering near 
That mystery 'y on d thought to plumb, 

Perchance sometimes in loathed fear 

They heard cold Danger whisper, Come ! — 

Heard and obeyed. O, if thou weep 
Such courage and honor, beauty, care, 

Be it for joy that those who sleep 
Only thy joy could share. 

— Walter de la Mare. 



JOHN DRINKWATER 77 



THE DEFENDERS 

His wage of rest at nightfall still 

He takes, who sixty years has known 

Of ploughing over Cotsall hill 
And keeping trim the Cotsall stone. 

He meditates the dusk, and sees 
Folds of his wonted shepherdings 

And lands of stubble and tall trees 
Becoming insubstantial things. 

And does he see on Cotsall hill — 
Thrown even to the central shire — 

The funnelled shapes forbidding still 
The stranger from his cottage fire ? 

— John Drinkwater. 



78 LOUISE DRISCOLL 



THE METAL CHECKS 

(The scene is a bare room, with two shaded windows 
at the back, and a fireplace between them with a fire burn- 
ing low. The room is furnished scantily with a few plain 
chairs, and a rough wooden table on which are piled a great 
many small wooden trays. The Counter, who is Death, 
sits at the table. He wears a loose gray robe, and his face 
is partly concealed by a gray veil. He does not look at 
The Bearer, but works mechanically and speaks in a monot- 
onous tone. The Bearer is the World, that bears the bur- 
den of War. He wears a soiled robe of brown and green 
and he carries on his back a gunny-bag with the little 
metal disks that have been used for the identification of 
the slain common soldiers.) 

The Beaker 
Here is a sack, a gunny sack, 

A heavy sack I bring. 
Here is toll of many a soul — 
But not the soul of a king. 

This is the toll of common men, 
Who lived in the common way ; 

Lived upon bread and wine and love, 
In the light of the common day. 

This is the toll of working men, 
Blood and brawn and brain. 






LOUISE DRISCOLL 79 

Who shall render us again 
The worth of all the slain ? 

(As the Counter speaks, the Bearer pours out the disks 
on the table. The Bearer obeys the Counter.) 

The Counter 

Pour them out on the table here. 
Clickety-clickety-clack ! 
For every button a man went out, 
And who shall call him back ? 
Clickety-clickety-clack ! 

One — two — three — four — 

Every disk a soul ! 
Three score — four score — 
So many boys went out to war. 
Pick up that one that fell on the floor — 

Didn't you see it roll ? 
That was a man a month ago. 
This was a man. Row upon row — 
Pile them in tens and count them so. 

The Bearer 

I have an empty sack. 

It is not large. Would you have said 
That I could carry on my back 

So great an army — and all dead ? 



80 LOUISE DRISCOLL 

(As the Counter speaks the Bearer lays the sack over 
his arm and helps count.) 

The Counter 

Put a hundred in each tray — 
We can tally them best that way. 
Careful — do you understand 
You have ten men in your hand ? 
There's another fallen — there — 
Under that chair. 
(The Bearer finds it and restores it.) 

That was a man a month ago ; 
He could see and feel and know. 
Then, into his throat there sped 
A bit of lead. 

Blood was salt in his mouth ; he fell 
And lay amid the battle wreck. 
Nothing was left but this metal check — 
And a wife and child, perhaps. 

(The Bearer finds the bag on his arm troublesome. He 
holds it up, inspecting it.) 

The Bearer 

What can one do with a thing like this ? 

Neither of life nor death it is ! 

For the dead serve not, though it served the dead. 

The wounds it carried were wide and red, 

Yet they stained it not. Can a man put food, 



LOUISE DRISCOLL 81 

Potatoes or wheat, or even wood 

That is kind and burns with a flame to warm 

Living men who are comforted — 

In a thing that has served so many dead ? 

There is no thrift in a graveyard dress, 

It's been shroud for too many men. 

I'll burn it and let the dead bless. 

(He crosses himself and throws it into the fire. He 
watches it burn. The Counter continues to pile up 
the metal checks, and drop them by hundreds into the 
trays, which he piles one upon another. The Bearer 
turns from the fire and speaks more slowly than he has 
before. He indicates the metal checks.) 

Would not the blood of these make a great sea 

For men to sail their ships on ? It may be 

No fish would swim in it, and the foul smell 

Would make the sailors sick. Perhaps in Hell 

There's some such lake for men who rush to war 

Prating of glory, and upon the shore 

Will stand the wives and children and old men 

Bereft, to drive them back again 

When they seek haven. Some such thing 

I thought the while I bore it on my back 

And heard the metal pieces clattering. 

The Counter 

Four score — five score — 
These and many more. 

G 



82 LOUISE DRISCOLL 

Forward — march ! — into the tray ! 

No bugles blow to-day, 

No captains lead the way ; 

But mothers and wives, 

Fathers, sisters, little sons, 

Count the cost 

Of the lost ; 

And we count the unlived lives, 

The forever unborn ones 

Who might have been your sons. 

The Beaker 

Could not the hands of these rebuild 

That which has been destroyed ? 

Oh, the poor hands ! that once were strong and 

filled 
With implements of labor whereby they 
Served home and country through the peaceful day. 
When those who made the war stand face to face 
With these slain soldiers in that unknown place 
Whither the dead go, what will be the word 
By dead lips spoken and by dead ears heard ? 
Will souls say King or Kaiser? Will souls prate 
Of earthly glory in that new estate? 

The Counter 

One hundred thousand — 

One hundred and fifty thousand — 

Two hundred — 






LOUISE DRISCOLL 83 

The Bearer 

Can this check plough ? 

Can it sow ? can it reap ? 
Can we arouse it ? 

Is it asleep ? 

Can it hear when a child cries ? — 

Comfort a wife ? 
This little metal disk 

Stands for a life. 

Can this check build, 

Laying stone upon stone ? 
Once it was warm flesh 

Folded on bone. 

Sinew and muscle firm, 

Look at it — can 
This little metal check 

Stand for a man ? 

The Counter 

One — two — three — four — 

— Louise Driscoll. 



84 GEOFFREY FABER 



"FOR THOSE AT SEA" 

(H.M.S. "Aboukir," "Cressy," "Rogue," September 22, 
1914.) 

Now all our English woodland sighs " October." 

The mild sun going down behind the trees 
Doth bless a countryside as sweet and sober 

As ever put on brown and red to please ; 
The brooks run blood, but 'tis such blood as 
Heav'n, 

Pierced with light, lets fall on field and village ; 
England's dear breasts are still unbruised, unriv'n 

The autumn peace on pastureland and tillage. 
Dear mother of us all, hast thou not heard ? 

Thou knowest how thy sons, our brothers, died 
Of late, and hast thou not a sorrowful word ? 

O no ! Thou dost contain thyself in pride. 
Pity suits not for those, who guarding thee 
Guard more than their own lives, for those at sea. 

— Geoffrey Faber. 



JAMES BERNARD FAG AN 85 



/ 



THE MAN IN THE TRENCH 

Can you not hear me, young man in the street ? 

Is it nothing to you who pass by, 

Who down the dim-lit ways in thousands roam ? 

From here I watch you, through the driving sleet, 

Under the evening sky, 

Hurrying home. 

Home ! — how the word sounds like a bell — 

I wonder can you know, as I know well, 

That in this trench 

Of death and stench 

I stand between your home and hell. 

I am the roof that shields you from the weather, 
I am the gate that keeps the brigand back, 
When pillage, fire, and murder come together, 
I am the wall that saves your home from sack. 
Man ! when you look upon the girl you prize, 
Can you imagine horror in those eyes ? 
You have not seen, you cannot understand, 
This trench is England, all this ruined land 
Is where you wander, street, or field, or strand, 
Save for God's grace, and for the guns that rest 
Upon this dripping mudbank of the west. 



86 JAMES BERNARD FAGAN 

Our blood has stained your threshold — will you 

stain 
Your soul, give nothing and take all our gain ? 
Why did I come ? I ask not, nor repent ; 
Something blazed up inside me, and I went. 
The khaki fringe is frayed, and now a rent 
Needs men — needs men, and I am almost spent. 
Night, and the "ready" ... so sleep well, my 

friend . . . 
The guns again are going ... I must stick it to 

the end. 

— James Bernard Fagan. 



AGNES S. FALCONER 87 



/ 



TERRITORIALS 

Where are the lads who went out to the war ? 
This year, and last year and long, long ago — 
With eyes full of laughter and song on their lips — 
(Our sad hearts flew after as birds follow ships !) 
Where are they now, do you know f 

Some sleep in Flanders and some sleep in France, 
This year, and last year, and long years to come — 
And under the rampart that guards far Stamboul 
Some are camped in a rest deep and cool, 

And they heed not the bugle and drum ! 

They'll come, though not all ! They will come from 

the war ! — 
This year or next year, or early or late — 
And come well or wounded, come many or few, 
They will bring back their honor, their faith high 
and true 

Or will bear it to Paradise Gate. 

— Agnes S. Falconer. 



88 WILLIAM DUDLEY FOULKE 



HONOR TO FRANCE! 

In peace we held thy worth in scant esteem ; 

Thy sons were dissolute, thy daughters frail ; 
How light and fair and fickle didst thou seem 

In time of need, alas, how sure to fail ! 
But when war came, a war that was not thine — 

And the flame seared thee, then thy heart we 
knew. 
In that dark tumult how thy soul did shine 

Loyal and steadfast, pure and brave and true. 
Nay, thou art honored even by the foe, 

In martyrdom transformed and glorified ! 
And we who scorned (how little did we know !) 

Stripped of the tattered mantle of our pride, 
Let us in self-abasement bend the knee 
And pray for God's grace to become like thee. 

— William Dudley Foulke. 



FLORENCE KIPER FRANK 89 



THE JEWISH CONSCRIPT 

(There are nearly a quarter of a million Jews in the 
Czar's army alone. — Newspaper clipping.) 

They have dressed me up in a soldier's dress, 

With a rifle in my hand, 
And have sent me bravely forth to shoot 

My own in a foreign land. 

Oh, many shall die for the fields of their homes, 

And many in conquest wild, 
But I shall die for the fatherland 

That murdered my little child. 

How many hundreds of years ago — 

The nations wax and cease ! — 
Did the God of our fathers doom us to bear 

The flaming message of peace ! 

We are the mock and the sport of time ! 

Yet why should I complain ! — 
For a Jew that they hung on the bloody cross, 

He also died in vain. 

— Florence Kiper Frank. 



90 ADJUTANT GILBERT FRANKAU 



HEADQUARTERS 

A league and a league from the trenches — from 

the traversed maze of the lines, 
Where daylong the sniper watches and daylong the 

bullet whines, 
And the cratered earth is in travail with mines and 

with countermines — 



Here, where haply some woman dreamed (are those 

her roses that bloom 
In the garden beyond the windows of my littered 

working room ?) 
We have decked the map for our masters as a bride 

is decked for the groom. 



Fair, on each lettered numbered square — cross- 
road and mound and wire, 

Loophole, redoubt and emplacement — lie the tar- 
gets their mouths desire ; 

Gay with purples and browns and blues, have we 
traced them their arcs of fire. 



ADJUTANT GILBERT FRANKAU 91 

And ever the type-keys chatter ; and ever our keen 

wires bring 
Word from the watchers a-crouch below, word from 

the watchers a-wing : 
And ever we hear the distant growl of our hid guns 

thundering. 

Hear it hardly, and turn again to our maps, where 
the trench-lines crawl, 

Red on the gray and each with a sign for the rang- 
ing shrapnel's fall — 

Snakes that our masters shall scotch at dawn, as is 
written here on the wall. 

For the weeks of our waiting draw to a close. . . . 
There is scarcely a leaf astir 

In the garden beyond my windows, where the 
twilight shadows blurr 

The blaze of some woman's roses. . . . "Bom- 
bardment orders, sir." 

— Gilbert Frankau. 



92 JOHN FREEMAN 



THE RETURN 

I heard the rumbling guns. I saw the smoke, 
The unintelligible shock of hosts that still, 

Far off, unseeing, strove and strove again ; 
And beauty flying naked down the hilL 

From morn to eve : and the stern night cried Peace ! 

And shut the strife in darkness : all was still, 
Then slowly crept a triumph on the dark — 

And I heard Beauty singing up the hill. 

— John Freeman. 



H. REX FRESTON 93 



THE GIFT 

His eyes are bright and eager, with the brightness 
of the sun, 

(England, he gives them you) 
His hands are strong for climbing and his feet are 
swift to run, 

(England, he gives them you) 
He has knowledge of the meadows, in the dreamy 

autumn days, 
The brown hill, and the gold hill, and the green 
forgotten ways, 

(But he leaves them now for you). 
There's a certain ancient city where he once was 
free and young, 

(But he leaves it now for you), 
Where Oxford tales are spoken, and Oxford ways are 
sung, 

(But he leaves them now for you) 
And his heart is often weary, for that dear old river 

shore, 
And he thinks a little sadly, of the days that come no 
more, 

(But he gives them up for you). 



94 H. REX FRESTON 

If his dust is one day lying, in an unfamiliar land, 

(England, he went for you) 
Oh, England, sometimes think of him, of thousands, 

only one, 
In the dawning, or the noonday, or the setting of 
the sun, 

(As once he thought of you). 
For to him and many like him, there seemed no 
other way 

(England, he asked not why) 
The giving up of all things, for ever and for aye, 

(England, he asked not why) 
And so he goes unshrinking, from those dearest paths 

of home, 
For he knows, great-hearted England, let whatever 
fate may come 

You will never let him die ! 

— H. Rex Freston. 
(Killed in action in France, Jan. 24, 1916.) 



MISS V. H. FRIEDLAENDER 95 



PASSOVER 

The doors of life are two ; 
And, on some midnight still, 
The Lord shall pass your way, and do 
According to your will. 

For, lo, if your desire 
Be set upon the hearth, 
There He will kindle you a fire, 
Pleasant and of the earth ; 

And you shall take delight 
For ever in that flame, 
But not again shall come a night 
When He will call your name. 

Or, if you count it sin 
That darkness wrap His shrine, 
His breath shall light instead therein 
The spark that is divine ; 

No shelter from the cold, 
No ease it shall afford — 
But by that gleam you shall behold 
The glory of the Lord. 



96 



MISS V. H. FRIEDLAENDER 



Now choose you ! . . . nor forget, 
Choosing this last alone, 
The blood upon your lintel set 
For sign, must be your own. 

— V. H. Friedlaender. 



G. A. J. C. 97 



IRELAND 

The Dreamers : — 

Outpost of Europe, watcher of the seas, 

Bulwark to part the dark Atlantic tide, 
Still in the sunset lost Hesperides 

Raise peak on peak, and purple galleys glide, 
Kings for their oarsmen, queens for garnishing, 

Gleam of their gold that sets the west afire, 
Till the night falls, that knows not any thing, 

And the new day brings back the old desire. 

The Mediterraneans : — 

We are your seamen, seamen from the south : 

We sought and found you ere the Tyrian sailed, 
Steered with glad shouting through the harbor- 
mouth, 

Parted the woods, and left you half unveiled ; 
Ours, ours, that ventured through the forest-bars, 

Saw the brown spate and sweetness of the glen, 
And the great breasts domed up against the stars, 

Held you and loved you ; we were first of men. 

The Northmen : — 
These were thy clansmen, dark with sun and toil, 
These knew the Atlas, these the desert knew, 



98 G. A. J. c. 

Builders of homesteads, thirsty for the soil, 

Green lands and droughtless, carpeted with dew. 

We that came after, racing prow to prow, 
Men of the grey lands, narrowing to the pole, 

Strangers and fair-haired — none are strangers now ; 
We gave our heart's blood; you gave us back a 
soul. 

The Fighting Line : — 

Heart's blood of our blood, is the throb so weak, 

Ireland, our Ireland, lost beyond the seas ? 
Thousands of living, nay dead men, rise and speak, 

From Flanders on to the ancestral Cyclades. 
These are from Ireland, these to Ireland calling, 

Look to the sunrise, shaft on shaft unfurled, 
Look to the light once more on Valmy falling, 

Where France in arms first clarioned the world. 

— G. A. J. C. 



LILLIAN GARD 99 



HER "ALLOWANCE!" 

'Er looked at me bunnet (I knows 'e aint noo !) 
'Er turned up 'er nose at the patch on me shoe ! 
And 'er sez, pointed like, "Liza, what do 'e do 
With yer 'llowance?" 

'Er looked at the children (they'm clean and they'm 

neat, 
But their clothes be as plain as the victuals they 

eat) : 
And 'er sez, "Why not dress 'em up fine for a treat 
With yer 'llowance?" 

I sees 'er long feather and trimmy-up gown : 
I sez, as I looks 'er quite square up and down, 
"Do 'e think us keeps 'oliday 'ere in the town 
With my 'llowance?" 

"Not likely !" I sez. And I bids 'er "Good-day !" 
And I kneels on the shabby old canvas to pray 
For Bill, who's out fightin' such brave miles away. 
(And I put back a foo o' they coins for 'e may 
Be needin' a part — may my Bill — who can say ? — 
Of my 'llowance !) 

— Lillian Gard. 



100 WILFRID WILSON GIBSON 



BETWEEN THE LINES 

When consciousness came back, he found he lay 
Between the opposing fires, but could not tell 
On which hand were his friends ; and either way 
For him to turn was chancy — bullet and shell 
Whistling and shrieking over him, as the glare 
Of searchlights scoured the darkness to blind day. 
He scrambled to his hands and knees ascare, 
Dragging his wounded foot through puddled clay, 
And tumbled in a hole a shell had scooped 
At random in a turnip-field between 
The unseen trenches where the foes lay cooped 
Through that unending battle of unseen, 
Dead-locked, league-stretching armies; and quite 

spent 
He rolled upon his back within the pit, 
And lay secure, thinking of all it meant — 
His lying in that little hole, sore hit, 
But living, while across the starry sky 
Shrapnel and shell went screeching overhead — 
Of all it meant that he, Tom Dodd, should lie 
Among the Belgian turnips, while his bed . . . 
If it were he, indeed, who'd climbed each night, 
Fagged with the day's work, up the narrow stair, 



WILFRID WILSON GIBSON 101 

And slipt his clothes off in the candle-light, 
Too tired to fold them neatly on a chair 
The way his mother'd taught him — too dog-tired 
After the long day's serving in the shop, 
Inquiring what each customer required, 
Politely talking weather, fit to drop . . . 

And now for fourteen days and nights, at least, 
He hadn't had his clothes off, and had lain 
In muddy trenches, napping like a beast 
With one eye open, under sun and rain 
And that unceasing hell-fire . . . 

It was strange 
How things turned out — the chances ! You'd just 

got 
To take your luck in life, you couldn't change 
Your luck. 

And so here he was lying shot 
Who just six months ago had thought to spend 
His days behind a counter. Still, perhaps . . . 
And now, God only knew how he would end ! 

He'ld like to know how many of the chaps 
Had won back to the trench alive, when he 
Had fallen wounded and been left for dead, 
If any ! . . . 

This was different, certainly, 
From selling knots of tape and reels of thread 



102 WILFRID WILSON GIBSON 

And knots of tape and reels of thread and knots 
Of tape and reels of thread and knots of tape, 
Day in, day out, and answering " Have you got"s 
And "Do you keep"s, till there seemed no escape 
From everlasting serving in a shop, 
Inquiring what each customer required, 
Politely talking weather, fit to drop, 
With swollen ankles, tired . . . 

But he was tired 
Now. Every bone was aching, and had ached 
For fourteen days and nights in that wet 

trench — 
Just duller when he slept than when he waked — 
Crouching for shelter from the steady drench 
Of shell and shrapnel . . . 

That old trench, it seemed 
Almost like home to him. He'd slept and fed 
And sung and smoked in it, while shrapnel screamed 
And shells went whining harmless overhead — 
Harmless, at least, as far as he . . . 

But Dick — 
Dick hadn't found them harmless yesterday, 
At breakfast, when he'd said he couldn't stick 
Eating dry bread, and crawled out the back way, 
And brought them butter in a lordly dish — 
Butter enough for all, and held it high, 
Yellow and fresh and clean as you could wish — 
When plump upon the plate from out the sky 



WILFRID WILSON GIBSON 103 

A shell fell bursting . . . Where the butter went, 
God only knew ! . . . 

And Dick . . . He dared not think 
Of what had come to Dick ... or what it meant — 

The shrieking and the whistling and the stink 
He'd lived in fourteen days and nights. 'Twas luck 
That he still lived . . . And queer how little then 
He seemed to care that Dick . . . Perhaps 'twas 

pluck 
That hardened him — a man among the men — 
Perhaps . . . Yet, only think things out a bit, 
And he was rabbit-livered, blue with funk ! 
And he'd liked Dick . . . and yet when Dick was 

hit, 
He hadn't turned a hair. The meanest skunk 
He should have thought would feel it when his mate 
Was blown to smithereens — Dick, proud as punch, 
Grinning like sin, and holding up the plate — 
But he had gone on munching his dry hunch, 
Unwinking, till he swallowed the last crumb. 

Perhaps 'twas just because he dared not let 
His mind run upon Dick, who'd been his chum. 
He dared not now, though he could not forget. 

Dick took his luck. And, life or death, 'twas luck 
From first to last ; and you'd just got to trust 



104 WILFRID WILSON GIBSON 

Your luck and grin. It wasn't so much pluck 
As knowing that you'd got to, when needs must, 
And better to die grinning . . . 

Quiet now 
Had fallen on the night. On either hand 
The guns were quiet. Cool upon his brow 
The quiet darkness brooded, as he scanned 
The starry sky. He'd never seen before 
So many stars. Although, of course, he'd known 
That there were stars, somehow before the war 
He'd never realised them — so thick-sown, 
Millions and millions. Serving in the shop, 
Stars didn't count for much ; and then at nights 
Strolling the pavements, dull and fit to drop, 
You didn't see much but the city lights. 
He'd never in his life seen so much sky 
As he'd seen this last fortnight. It was queer 
The things war taught you. He'd a mind to try 
To count the stars — they shone so bright and clear. 
One, two, three, four . . . Ah, God, but he was 

tired . . . 
Five, six, seven, eight . . . 

Yes, it was number eight. 
And what was the next thing that she required ? 
(Too bad of customers to come so late, 
At closing-time !) Again within the shop 
He handled knots of tape and reels of thread, 
Politely talking weather, fit to drop . . . 



WILFRID WILSON GIBSON 105 

YvTience once again the whole sky overhead 

Flared blind with searchlights, and the shriek of 

shell 
And scream of shrapnel roused him. Drowsily 
He stared about him wondering. Then he fell 
Into deep dreamless slumber. 

He could see 
Two dark eyes peeping at him, ere he knew 
He was awake, and it again was day — 
An August morning burning to clear blue. 
The frightened rabbit scuttled . . . 

j Far away, 

A sound of firing . . . Up there, in the sky 
Big dragon-flies hung hovering . . . Snowballs burst 
About them . . . 

Flies and snowballs ! With a cry 
He crouched to watch the airmen pass — the first 
That he'd seen under fire. Lord, that was pluck — 
Shells bursting all about them — and what nerve! 
They took their chance, and trusted to their luck. 
At such a dizzy height to dip and swerve, 
Dodging the shell-fire . . . 

Hell ! but one was hit, 
And tumbling like a pigeon, plump . . . 

Thank Heaven, 
It righted, and then turned ; and after it 
The whole flock followed safe — four, five, six, seven, 



106 WILFRID WILSON GIBSON 

Yes, they were all there safe. He hoped they'ld win 
Back to their lines in safety. They deserved, 
Even if they were Germans . . . 'Twas no sin 
To wish them luck. Think how that beggar swerved 
Just in the nick of time ! 

He, too, must try 
To win back to the lines, though, likely as not, 
He'ld take the wrong turn : but he couldn't lie 
Forever in that hungry hole and rot, 
He'd got to take his luck, to take his chance 
Of being sniped by foes or friends. He'ld be 
With any luck in Germany or France 
Or Kingdom-come, next morning . . . 

Drearily 
The blazing day burnt over him. Shot and shell 
Whistling and whining ceaselessly. But light 
Faded at last, and as the darkness fell 
He rose, and crawled away into the night. 

— Wilfrid Wilson Gibson. 



FRANKLIN H. GID DINGS 107 



ULTIMATE HELL 

Satan ? I am. 

The Other One ? " The Great lam"? 
Who knows ? Millenniums ago 
Some rumor ran that He existed yet ! 
I half believed it true, as loath to think 
That He'd outwitted me, or suffered harm 
To rob me of a thrill. Eternity 
Is deadly now, I own. 

His name, you say, was God. 

As I recall, it was. Priests mumbled it, 

And cutthroats bawled it for an oath, 

Then, all at once, the priests began to think, 

And ceased to pray. 

'Twas quite the oddest thing that I have known, 

And my dear Foe became thenceforth a myth, 

Or faded, like the morning cloud, with man's 

Immortal hope (poor Tyndall's, eke, whose word 

I'll not forget) into the azure past. 

What of my kingdom now ? 

I have no kingdom now. Long time ago 

I tired of kings, as God in His day tired. 



108 FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS 

They were too boist'rous in their wickedness, 

Too bloody and uncouth. They weren't well bred. 

I heard the last of them 

Reigned somewhere on the Baltic Sea, 

A sodden Hohenzollern prince, 

Descended from that self-drunk one 

Who made a War — the only war 

That lately I had cared about. 

It promised well, but soon went wrong. 
Ten million men, yea, twice ten million men, 
Swarmed forth to fight for what they called ideals : 
From Belgium's mills and mines, from England's 

marts, 
From fairest France and sun-warm Italy, 
From Serbia and the Russian steppe, to fight 
For Right ! Oh God ! (old habits rise in me) 
For Liberty ! They left their little ones, 
Their wives, their gold ! They flung away their 

lives 
As storms throw pearls of rain. They wearied me ! 
They were too much like Christ, the crazy one, 
Who died forgiving all, and took a thief 
With him to Paradise. 

And so there is no Hell ? I'll not say that. 
The name is out of date, but things sometimes 
Survive their names, as names so oft live on 



FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS 109 

When things and men are dead. There is a land 

That once was dedicate to Liberty : 

A land that cast off kings and set slaves free. 

But when it gathered wealth, and fame, and power, 

And could have struck the blow that might have 

saved 
Throughout the world the things for which men 

died, 
The things for which long rows of graves were made, 
It would not strike. 

It let its own go gurgling down to death, 
And did not smite. 

Self-made, self-damned, self-governing, 

It hammers now, and smelts ; 

And ever, as it pounds, it sings, 

This Tubal Cain — of Peace ! 

And golden dollars jingle in the song, 

Beneath a sulphuring sky it dwells — at peace — 

In riveless unity of self -content. 

I'm growing old ? I do not relish quite 

The modern way, a Democratic Hell ? 

I'm growing old ? I wonder if I sometimes wish 

That God would come again ! 

— Franklin H. Giddings. 
New York, December 5, 1915. 



110 BERNARD GILBERT 



"I HAVE NO RING" 

I watch and listen with a dreadful fear, 
I wait and long and tremble in a breath ; 
Though he is gone to fight, yet is he near ; 
I have him always though he meet with Death : 
In the lone night time when my eyes are dim 
I cry with terror, yet my heart will sing ; 
I long, I long with sickness, yet with dread : 
My fear is double — more, far more, for him 
Who not yet lives than him who may be dead : 
I carry that which masters everything : 
And yet — to have his face and not his name, 
To be so loved, so longed for, yet — my shame ! 
Gladness and dread alike my love to sting. . . . 
I bear his burden — but — I have no ring. 

— Bernard Gilbert. 



VIOLET GILLESPIE 111 



THE DEAD 

TO ONE KILLED IN ACTION 

Deak love, they say thou art at rest. 
I heed them not, though thou art long, 
Dreaming that thou, with heart still strong 

For fighting, followest some far quest. 

They say, dear heart, I must forget. 

Nay, though the agony be deep, 

That memory can never sleep. 
Thy passioned kisses linger yet. 

They say, dear love, the daisies blithe 
Shall o'er thy head in summer spring. 
Daisies ! ... I see thy body swing 

Lithe and strong-limbed, above the scythe. 

Dear love, they say that in the light 
Of Heaven's joy our souls shall meet. 
Dear God ! I want thee now, the sweet 

Sight of thee — not in Heaven — to-night ! 

— Violet Gillespie. 



112 RICHARD BUTLER GLAENZER 



SURE, IT'S FUN! 

What fun to be a soldier ! 



— Everykid. 



Suee, it's fun to be a soldier I Oh, it's fun, fun, fun, 
Upon an iron shoulder-blade to tote a feather gun ; 
To hike with other brave galoots in easy-going 

army-boots ; 
To pack along a one-ounce sack, the commissary on 

your track ; 
To tramp, tramp, tramp, to a right-and-ready camp ! 
Fun ? — Sure, it's fun, just the finest ever, son ! 

Yes, it's fun to be a soldier ! Oh, it's fun, fun, fun, 
To loaf along a level road beneath a cloudless sun 
Or over fields of golden grain, kept cool by puffs of 

wind and rain ; 
Then richly, more-than-fully, fed, to stretch upon a 

downy bed 
And sleep, sleep, sleep, while the stay-at-homes 

weep ! 
Fun ? — Sure, it's fun, just the finest ever, son ! 

Oh, it's fun to be a soldier ! Oh, it's fun, fun, fun, 
To catch the silly enemy and get 'em on the run ; 



RICHARD BUTLER GLAENZER 113 

To here and there blow off a head with just a bit of 

chuckling lead ; 
To bayonet a foolish bloke at hide-and-seek in 

trench and smoke ; 
To shoot, shoot, shoot, till they've got no legs to 

scoot ! 
Fun ? — Sure, it's fun, just the finest ever, son ! 

God, it's fun to be a soldier ! Oh, it's fun, fun, fun, 
To lie out still and easy when your day's sport's 

done; 
With not a thing to worry for, nor anything to 

hurry for ; 
Not hungry, thirsty, tired, but a hero much-admired, 
Just dead, dead, dead, like Jack and Bill and Fred ! 
Fun ? — Sure, it's fun, just the finest ever, son ! 

— Richard Butler Glaenzer. 



114 GREGG GODDARD 



THE AIRMAN 

Wild wind, and drear, beneath the pale stars blow- 
ing, 

Whom do you hunt to-night ? 
Out of the west into the storm-cloud glowing 

A biplane wings her flight. 

In the grey day-dawn was there no returning, 

No homewards for the dead : — 
Only a broken wing, a biplane burning, 

A shattered airship shed ! 

O Nation proud, on whose red altar gladly 

One more young Life is laid, 
Scatter the news — flutter the posters madly — 

"Triumph of British raid !" 

What of the Cross they brought to her — his 
Mother? 
Wanly her dumb lips smiled, 
Then whispered : " Give back him — I had no 
other — 
My Son — my only child." 

— Gregg Goddard. 






ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 115 



BROTHERS IN ARMS 

When behind her violated border, 

With unflinching bayonet and gun, 
Belgium, in heroic battle order, 
; Met the savage onset of the Hun ; 
When o'er league on league of peaceful tillage, 

Under screaming showers of shot and shell, 
Into open town, defenceless village, 

He let loose his shameless hounds of Hell ; 
When Liege, henceforth a name immortal ! 

Perished fighting at his cannons' mouth, 
When he seized Namur, and through her portal, 

Drunk with fury, still went surging south ; 
When with murderous rapine still unsated, 

Sworn to bend them to his bloody yoke, 
On the French and British Arms belated 

Wave on wave his braggart legions broke ; 
When, outmarched before him, into distance, 

Frank and Briton steadfastly withdrew, 
Though he could not pierce our proud resistance, 

Break our firm-linked, friendly phalanx through ; 

Then our country, roused to righteous reason 
By the battle-thunder at her gate, 



116 ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 

Flung abroad no foolish cry of treason 
At the Rulers of her arms and State — 

Pardoned those whose eyes were proven blinder 
Than was Wisdom to the approach of war — 

Put her unpreparedness behind her, 
Only bade us look, henceforth, before. 

Therefore, every cry of party faction 

Into patriot silence fell away ; 
Britain summoned all her sons to action — 

Suffering Britain — could we but obey ? 

Then the adamantine cable stretching, 

Python-like across the ocean floor, 
Aid on aid from her far children fetching, 

Bade her heart with hope beat high once more ; 
Till the friends and foes whose fine derision 

Long had flouted her Imperial dream, 
Stood at gaze to mark the stately vision 

Rise incarnate o'er the ocean stream ; 
Marvelling, while above the pine-fringed waters, 

While above the palm-set Austral earth 
At their Mother's call, her mighty daughters, 

Sprang, as Pallas sprang, full-armed to birth ; 
While, O proudest Page in all the story 

Of Imperial India's book of life ! 
One by one each Princely Feudatory 

In our service arms him for the strife. 



ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES 117 

Our retreat is stayed, and Frank and Briton, 

Reinforced, leap forth to the attack — 
Now the smiter hip and thigh is smitten ; 

In defeat we roll him roughly back. 
Now again in anger dour he rallies, 

And again assaults us flank and front ; 
While his dead and ours o'er hills and valleys 

Mix amid the dreadful battle brunt. 
Up the slopes his batteries are crowning, 

Foot by foot we dig our trenches in ; 
Rise and charge and seize his cannon frowning, 

Though we fall in swaths one gun to win. 
Trusting surely that how oft soever 

Back and forth War's crimson waves may flow, 
On our faithful, chivalrous endeavor 

Victory's full-orbed sun at last shall glow. 

— Alfred Perceval Graves. 



118 JULIAN GRENFELL 



INTO BATTLE 

The naked earth is warm with Spring, 
And with green grass and bursting trees 

Leans to the sun's gaze glorying, 
And quivers in the sunny breeze ; 

And Life is Color and Warmth and Light, 

And a striving evermore for these ; 
And he is dead who will not fight ; 

And who dies fighting has increase. 

The fighting man shall from the sun 

Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth ; 
Speed with the light-foot winds to run, 

And with the trees to newer birth ; 
And find, when fighting shall be done, 

Great rest, and fullness after dearth. 

All the bright company of Heaven 
Hold him in their high comradeship, 

The Dog-Star and the Sisters Seven, 
Orion's Belt and sworded hip. 

The woodland trees that stand together, 
They stand to him each one a friend ; 



JULIAN GRENFELL 119 

They gently speak in the windy weather ; 
They guide to valley and ridges' end. 

The kestrel hovering by day, 

And the little owls that call by night, 

Bid him be swift and keen as they, 
As keen of ear, as swift of sight. 

The blackbird sings to him, Brother, brother, 
If this be the last song you shall sing, 

Sing well, for you may not sing another ; 
Brother, sing." 

In dreary doubtful waiting hours, 

Before the brazen frenzy starts, 
The horses show him nobler powers ; 

O patient eyes, courageous hearts ! 

And when the burning moment breaks, 
And all things else are out of mind, 

And only Joy-of-Battle takes 

Him by the throat, and makes him blind, 

Through joy and blindness he shall know, 
Not caring much to know, that still 

Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so 
That it be not the Destined Will. 



120 JULIAN GRENFELL 

The thundering line of battle stands, 
And in the air Death moans and sings ; 

But Day shall clasp him with strong hands, 

And Night shall fold him in soft wings. 

— Julian Grenfell. 
Flanders, April, 1915. 

Captain the Hon. Julian Henry Francis Grenfell, D.S.O., 
of the 1st (Royal) Dragoons, was wounded in the trenches 
in front of Ypres on May 13, and died in hospital at 
Boulogne on May 26, 1915. He was the eldest son of 
Lord Desborough, by whose consent the poem, is here 
reprinted. Lord Desborough writes: "Not many men 
would have knocked out two professional boxers and 
written those verses in one week." 



NORA GRIFFITHS 121 



THE WYKHAMIST 

In the wake of the yellow sunset one pale star 
Hangs over the darkening city's purple haze. 
An errand-boy in the street beneath me plays 
On a penny whistle. Very faint and far 
Comes the scroop of tortured gear on a battered car. 
A hyacinth nods pallid blooms on the window sill, 
Swayed by the tiny wind. St. Catherine's Hill 
Is a place of mystery, a land of dreams. 
The tramp of soldiers, barrack-marching, seems 
A thing remote, untouched by fate or time. 
... A year ago you heard Cathedral's chime, 
You hurried up to books — a year ago ; 
— Shouted for "Houses" in New Field below. 
. . . You . . . "died of wounds" . . . they told 
me 

. . . yet your feet 
Pass with the others down the twilit street. 

— Nora Griffiths. 



122 HERMANN HAGEDORN 



THE PYRES 

Pyres in the night, in the night ! 

And the roaring yellow and red. 
Trooper, trooper, why so white ? 

We are out to gather our dead. 
We have brought dry boughs from the bloody wood 

And the torn hill-side ; 
We have felled great trunks, wet with blood 

Of brothers that died ; 
We have piled them high for a flaming bed, 
Hemlock and ash and pine for a bed, 
A throne in the night, a throne for a bed — 
And we go to gather our dead. 

There where the oaks loom, dark and high, 

Over the sombre hill, 

Body on body, cold and still, 
Under the stars they lie. 
There where the silver river runs, 

Careless and calm as fate, 
Mowed, mowed by the terrible guns, 

The stricken brothers wait. 
There by the smoldering house, and there 
Where the red smoke hangs on the heavy air, 



HERMANN HAGEDORN 123 

Under the ruins, under the hedge, 
Cheek by cheek at the forest-edge ; 
Back to breast, three men deep, 

Hearing not bugle or drum, 
In the desperate trench they died to keep, 
Under the starry dome they sleep, 

Murmuring, "Brothers, come!" 

This way I I heard a call 

Like a stag's when he dies. 
Under the willows I saw him fall. 

Under the willows he lies. 
Give me your hand. Raise him up. 

Lift his head. Strike a light. 
This morning we shared a crust and a cup. 

He wants no supper to-night. 
Take his feet. Here the shells 

Broke all day long, 
Moaning and shrieking hell's 

Bacchanalian song ! 
Last night he helped me bear 

Men to hell's feting. 
To-morrow, maybe, somewhere, 

We, too, shall lie waiting. 

Pyres in the night, in the night ! 
Weary and sick and dumb, 



124 HERMANN HAGEDORN 

Under the flickering, faint starlight 
The drooping gleaners come. 

Out of the darkness, dim 
Shadowy shadow-bearers, 

Dragging into the bale-fire's rim 
Pallid death-farers. 

Pyres in the night, in the night ! 

In the plain, on the hill. 
No volleys for their last rite. 

We need our powder — to kill. 
High on their golden bed, 
Pile up the dead ! 

Pyres in the night, in the night ! 

Torches, piercing the gloom ! 
Look ! How the sparks take flight ! 

Stars, stars, make room ! 

Smoke, that was bone and blood ! 

Hark ! The deep roar. 
It is the souls telling God 

The glory of wak ! 

— Hermann Hagedorn. 



CICELY HAMILTON 125 



NON-COMBATANT 

Before one drop of angry blood was shed 
I was sore hurt and beaten to my knee ; 

Before one fighting man reeled back and died 
The War-Lords struck at me. 

They struck me down — an idle, useless mouth, 
As cumbrous — nay, more cumbrous — than the 
dead, 

With life and heart afire to give and give 
I take a dole instead. 

With life and heart afire to give and give 

I take and eat the bread of charity. 
In all the length of all this eager land, 

No man has need of me. 

That is my hurt — my burning, beating wound ; 

That is the spear-thrust driven through my pride ! 
With aimless hands, and mouth that must be fed, 

I wait and stand aside. 

Let me endure it, then, with stiffened lip : 

I, even I, have suffered in the strife ! 
Let me endure it then — I give my pride 

Where others give a life. _ CMy HamUton . 



126 THOMAS HARDY 



"MEN WHO MARCH AWAY" 

SONG OF THE SOLDIERS 

What of the faith and fire within us 

Men who march away 

Ere the barn-cocks say 

Night is growing gray, 
To hazards whence no tears can win us ; 
What of the faith and fire within us 

Men who march away ? 

Is it a purblind prank, O think you, 
Friend with the musing eye 
Who watch us stepping by, 
With doubt and dolorous sigh ? 

Can much pondering so hoodwink you ! 

Is it a purblind prank, O think you, 
Friend with the musing eye ? 

Nay. We see well what we are doing, 

Though some may not see — 

Dalliers as they be ! — 

England's need are we ; 
Her distress would set us rueing : 
Nay. We see well what we are doing, 

Though some may not see ! 



THOMAS HARDY 127 

In our heart of hearts believing 

Victory crowns the just, 

And that braggarts must 

Surely bite the dust, 
March we to the field ungrieving, 
In our heart of hearts believing 

Victory crowns the just. 

Hence the faith and fire within us 

Men who march away 

Ere the barn-cocks say 

Night is growing gray, 
To hazards whence no tears can win us ; 
Hence the faith and fire within us 

Men who march away. 

— Thomas Hardy. 



128 H. C. HARWOOD 



FROM THE YOUTH OF ALL NATIONS 

Think not, my elders, to rejoice 

When from the nations' wreck we rise, 

With a new thunder in our voice 
And a new lightning in our eyes. 

You called with patriotic sneers, 
And drums and sentimental songs. 

We came from out the vernal years 
Thus bloodily to right your wrongs. 

The sins of many centuries, 

Sealed by your indolence and fright, 

Have earned us these our agonies : 
The thunderous appalling night 

When from the lurid darkness came 
The pains of poison and of shell, 

The broken heart, the world's ill-fame, 
The lonely arrogance of hell. 

Faintly, as from a game afar, 

Your wrangles and your patronage 

Come drifting to the work of war 
Which you have made our heritage. 



H. C. HARWOOD 129 

Oh, chide us not. Not ours the crime. 

Oh, praise us not. It is not won, 
The fight which we shall make sublime 

Beneath an unaccustomed sun. 

The simple world of childhood fades 
Beyond the Styx that all have passed ; 

This is a novel land of shades, 
Wherein no ancient glories last. 

A land of desolation, blurred 

By mists of penitence and woe, 
Where every hope must be deferred 

And every river backward flow. 

Not on this grey and ruined plain 

Shall we obedient recall 
Your cities to rebuild again 

For their inevitable fall. 

We kneel at no ancestral shrine. 

With admirable blasphemy 
We desecrate the old divine 

And dream a new eternity. 

Destroy the history of men, 

The weary cycle of decay. 
We shall not pass that way again, 

We tread a new untrodden way. 



130 H. C. HARWOOD 

Though scattered wider yet our youth 

On every sea and continent, 
There shall come bitter with the truth 

A fraction of the sons you sent. 

When slowly with averted head, 

Some darkly, some with halting feet, 

And bowed with mourning for the dead 
We walk the cheering, fluttering street, 

A music terrible, austere 

Shall rise from our returning ranks 
To change your merriment to fear, 

And slay upon your lips your thanks ; 

And on the brooding weary brows 
Of stronger sons, close enemies, 

Are writ the ruin of your house 
And swift usurping dynasties. 

— H. C. Harwood. 



MAURICE HEWLETT 131 



SOLDIER, SOLDIER 

Soldier, soldier, off to the war, 

Take me a letter to my sweetheart O. 

He's gone away to France 

With his carbine and his lance, 

And a lock of brown hair of his sweetheart O. 

Fair maid of London, happy may you be 

To know so much of your sweetheart O. 

There's not a handsome lad, 

To get the chance he's had, 

But would skip, with a kiss for his sweetheart O. 

Soldier, soldier, whatever shall I do 

If the cruel Germans take my sweetheart O ? 

They'll pen him in the jail 

And starve him thin and pale, 

With never a kind word from his sweetheart O- 

Fair maid of London, is that all you see 

Of the lad you've taken for your sweetheart ? 

He'll make his prison ring 

With his God Save the King 

And his God bless the blue eyes of my sweetheart ! 



132 MAURICE HEWLETT 

Soldier, soldier, if by shot or shell 

They wound him, my dear lad, my sweetheart 0, 

He'll lie bleeding in the rain 

And call me, all in vain, 

Crying for the fingers of his sweetheart 0. 

Pretty one, pretty one, now take a word from me : 

Don't you grudge the life-blood of your sweetheart 0. 

For you must understand 

He gives it to our land, 

And proud should fly the colors of his sweetheart O. 

Soldier, soldier, my heart is growing cold — 

If a German shot kill my sweetheart O ! 

I could not lift my head 

If my dear love lay dead 

With his wide eyes waiting for his sweetheart 0. 

Poor child, poor child, go to church and pray, 

Pray God to spare you your sweetheart O. 

But if he live or die 

The English flag must fly, 

And England take care of his sweetheart O ! 

— Maurice Hewlett. 



NORAH M. HOLLAND 133 



APRIL IN ENGLAND 

April in England. Daffodils are growing 
By every wayside, golden, tall and fair ; 

April — and all the little winds are blowing 
The scents of springtime through the sunny air. 

April in England. God, that we were there. 

April in England. And her sons are lying 
On these red fields and dreaming of her shore ; 

April — we hear the thrushes' songs replying 
Each unto each, above the cannons' roar. 

April in England. Shall we see it more ? 

April in England. There's the cuckoo calling 
Down in her meadows, where the cowslip gleams, 

April — and little showers are softly falling, 
Dimpling the surface of her babbling streams. 

April in England. How the shrapnel screams. 

April in England. Blood and dust and smother, 

Screaming of horses, men in agony, 
April — full many of thy sons, O Mother, 

Never again those dewy dawns shall see 
April in England. God keep England free. 

— Norah M. Holland. 



134 LIEUT. DYNELEY HUSSEY 



THINGS THAT WERE YOURS 

These things were yours, these little simple things ; 
You touched them, used them one time, loved 
them well. 
Now you are gone, but still about them clings 

The fragrance of your hands adorable. 
These childish books; these learned works well- 
thumbed ; 
These time-stained prints; these comfortable 
chairs ; 
This music, and this album where you gummed 
Your childhood's treasure ; these Italian jars ; 
This little cup blue-patterned ; this old bed ; 

These sheets that whitely wrapt you slumbering; 

These garden-walks and autumn-tinted trees, 
That knew your laughter, and past numbering 
These blades of grass that bent beneath your tread : 
Because they once were yours, I love all these. 

— Dyneley Hussey. 
(Lieut., 13th Bn. Lancashire Fusiliers.) 



/. H. s. 135 



JOAN OF FRANCE TO AN ENGLISH SISTER 
I. M. Edith Cavell, nurse 

" Title que estoit au royaume de France." 

Pity had I for my France my land 

In the days so far that be, 
Pity of heart and pity of hand — 

And who had pity on me ? 
England's daughter, led out to die 

For a deed of mercy and truth, 
Guerdon of helper thou hast as I 

From the men that have murdered ruth. 
Sister of Joan by the pity, the spite, 

Joy yet in the pain be thine : 
We have armed our folk with a quenchless might, 

Fire of thy bosom and mine. 

— J. H. S. 



136 MRS. VIOLET JACOB 



THE TWA WEELUMS 

I'm Sairgeant Weelum Henderson frae Pairth, 

That's wha I am ! 
There's just ae regimint in a' the airth 

That's worth a damn ; 
An' gin the bonniest fechter o' the lot 

Ye seek to see, 
Him that's the best — whaur ilka man's a Scot- 

Speir you at me ! 

Gin there's a hash o' Gairmans pitten oot 

By aichts an' tens, 
That Wully Henderson's been thereaboot 

A'body kens ; 
Fegs-aye ! Yon Weelum that's in Gairmanie, 

He hadna' reckoned 
Wi' Sairgint Weelum Henderson an' wi' 

The Forty-Second ! 

Yon day we lichtit on the shores o' France, 

The lassies standin' 
Trod ilk on ither's taes to get the chance 

To see us landin'. 



MRS. VIOLET JACOB 137 

The besoms ! O they smiled to me — an' yet 

They couldna' help it. 
(MyseP, I just was thinkin' foo we'd get 

They Gairmans skelpit.) 

I'm wearied wi' them, for it's aye the same 

Whaure'er we gang, 
Oor Captain thinks we've got his een to blame, 

But man ! he's wrang ! 
I winna say he's no as smairt a lad 

As ye micht see 
Atween twa Sawbiths — aye, he's no sae bad, 

But he's no me ! 

Weel, let the limmers bide ; their bonnie lips 

Are fine an' reid, 
But me an' Weelum's got to get to grips 

Afore we're deid, 
An' gin he thinks he hasna' met his match 

He'll sune be wiser — 
Here's to mysel' ! Here's to the auld Black Watch ! 

An' damn the Kaiser ! 

— Violet Jacob. 



138 ELINOR JENKINS 



A LEGEND OF YPRES 

Before the throne the spirits of the slain 
With a loud voice importunately cried, 
" O Lord of Hosts, whose name be glorified, 

Scarce may the line one onslaught more sustain 

Wanting our help. Let it not be in vain, 
Not all in vain, O God, that we have died." 
And smiling on them our good Lord replied, 

"Begone then, foolish ones, and fight again." 

Our eyes were holden, that we saw them not ; 

Disheartened foes beheld — our prisoners said — 
Behind us massed, a mighty host indeed, 
Where no host was. On comrades unforgot 

We thought, and knew that all those valiant dead 
Forwent their rest to save us at our need. 

— Elinor Jenkins. 

(See note on " The First Battle of Ypres," by Mrs. Mar- 
garet L. Woods, p. 290 of this volume.) 



EDMUND JOHN 139 



IN MEMORIAM 

(To Field-Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar, died 
November, 1914) 

Rest, though the clamorous surge of war 

Follow thy peace to the great doors of Death ; 

As in thy fearless life, so now, the cannons' roar, 
The roll of drums, at thy last breath 

Proclaim thee Conqueror ! 

The prophets and the warriors who have passed 
That way before thy coming, welcome thee ; 

The Angel's trumpet sounds a nobler blast, 
And kings and knights of the old chivalry 

Now hail thee at the last. 

Thy days, thy deeds, thy words of proven gold, 
Thy son, and last of all, thyself did give 

For Country's sake, and now the tale is told 
Thy splendid memory shall breathe and live 

Till all men's hearts lie cold. 

— Edmund John. 



140 NIZAM AT JUNG 



INDIA TO ENGLAND 

England ! in thine hour of need, 
When Faith's reward and valor's meed 

Is death or glory, 
When Faith indites, with biting brand, 
Clasped in each warrior's stiffening hand, 

A nation's story ; 

Though weak our hands, which fain would clasp 
The warrior's sword with warrior's grasp 

On victory's field ; 
Yet turn, O mighty Mother ! turn 
Unto the million hearts that burn 

To be thy shield. 

Thine equal justice, mercy, grace 
Have made a distant alien race 

A part of thee. 
'Twas thine to bid their souls rejoice 
When first they heard the living voice 

Of Liberty. 

Unmindful of their ancient name, 
And lost to honor — glory — fame, 
And sunk in strife, 



NIZAMAT JUNG 141 

Thou found them, whom thy touch hath made 
Men, and to whom thy breath conveyed 
A nobler life. 

They, whom thy love hath guarded long ; 
They, whom thy care hath rendered strong 

In love and faith, 
Their heartstrings round thy heart entwine, 
They are, they ever will be, thine j 

In life — in death. 

— Nizamat Jung. 

(Native Judge of the High Court of Hyderabad.) 



142 REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN 



THE NATIONS' DAVID 

Erect before Hell's hurricane, between the Germans 

and the sea, 
Belgium, still smiling through your pain; still, in 

the hour of ruin, free ; 
While yet the cannon's note resounds along each 

poplar-bordered way, 
O, bleeding Belgium, to your wounds what mankind 

owes what man may say ? 

Long years, while battle came and went afar at 

Fate's malign caprice, 
Your kindly folk, serene, content, pursued the 

pleasant ways of peace. 
They promised, all the mighty ones: "In that 

calm land shall not be heard 
The thunder of our angry guns" — Kaiser and King, 

they pledged their word. 

And then, unwarning, arrogant, the cut-throat liar 

of Berlin 
Tore into shreds his covenant: his armed hosts 

were swarming in 



REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN 143 

From Prussian beer-halls, Rhinish hills, from Aurich 

east to Gumbinnen, 
From Rostock down to stolen Silz, sounded the tramp 

of Krupp-made men. 

This was your guardian brother's gift, the choice 

he gave his little ward : 
Betrayal of France (the course of thrift) or (Honor's 

course) the crimsoned sword. 
And you, the Nations' David, chose, while all the 

world stood trembling by ; 
You called your sons, and they arose : " Come forth 

to die ! Come forth to die !" 

Your weaver stopped his whirring loom; as Csesar 

met him, even so now 
Your farmer hurried to his doom, and in its furrow 

left the plough ; 
And Flanders, Hainault, Brabant came, Antwerp 

and Limburg — all the land : 
The nameless and the proud of name, shoulder to 

shoulder, hand in hand. 

Not for adventure, nor in pride: with naught to 

gain and all to lose — 
Their homes, their wives, their lives beside — true 

sons of you, they, too, could choose. 



144 REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN 

They came, with eyes that looked on death; not 
driven slaves, but conscious men : 

The Brugan burgher scant of breath, the lean- 
limbed hunter of Ardennes. 

Their part it was to hold the gate, the narrow gate, 

against a foe 
Outnumbering scores to one — to wait till Death 

alone should bid them go. 
And how they held it ! Man and child ; about Liege 

where Leman fed 
Blood-hungry Prussians blood and piled the 

meadows with heroic dead ; 

While village after village fell, cottage and church 

engulfed in smoke ; 
While all the land became a Hell and served to turn 

a Teuton joke ; 
While Belgian women prayed in vain for German 

mercy, trusting, fond ; 
While German "Culture" burned Louvain, and 

German tenderness Termonde : 

You did it, Little Belgium — you! You stopped 

the dyke with half your sons ; 
You did what no one else could do against the 

Vandals and the Huns ! 



REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN 145 

The eternal future in your debt from now until 

Man's latest day, 
How can the wondering world forget — and how, 

remembering, repay? 

France, Britain, Russia : they have fought as fits 
the vast initiate ; 

You, all unready, but unbought, till they were 
marshalled, held the gate. 

Above all clamour and applause, you stand, what- 
ever else befall, 

God's David in Mankind's high cause: Belgium, 
the bravest of them all ! 

— Reginald Wright Kauffman. 



146 HERBERT KAUFMAN 



THE HELL-GATE OF SOISSONS 

My name is Darino, the poet. You have heard? 

Oui, Comedie Francaise. 
Perchance it has happened, mon ami, you know of 

my unworthy lays. 
Ah, then, you must guess how my fingers are itching 

to talk to a pen ; 
For I was at Soissons, and saw it, the death of the 

twelve Englishmen. 

My leg, malheureusement, I left it behind on the 

banks of the Aisne. 
Regret? I would pay with the other to witness 

their valor again. 
A trifle, indeed, I assure you, to give for the honor 

to tell 
How that handful of British, undaunted, went into 

the Gateway of Hell. 

Let me draw you a plan of the battle. Here we 

French and your Engineers stood ; 
Over there a detachment of German sharpshooters 

lay hid in a wood. 



HERBERT KAUFMAN 147 

A mitrailleuse battery planted on top of this well- 
chosen ridge 

Held the road for the Prussians and covered the 
direct approach to the bridge. 

It was madness to dare the dense murder that spewed 

from those ghastly machines. 
(Only those who have danced to its music can know 

what the mitrailleuse means.) 
But the bridge on the Aisne was a menace; our 

safety demanded its fall : 
"Engineers, — volunteers !" In a body, the Royals 

stood out at the call. 

Death at best was the fate of that mission — to 

their glory not one was dismayed. 
A party was chosen — and seven survived till the 

powder was laid. 
And they died with their fuses unlighted. Another 

detachment ! Again 
A sortie is made — all too vainly. The bridge still 

commanded the Aisne. 

We were fighting two foes — Time and Prussia — 
the moments were worth more than troops. 

We must blow up the bridge. A lone soldier darts 
out from the Royals and swoops 



148 HERBERT KAUFMAN 

For the fuse ! Fate seems with us. We cheer 
him ; he answers — our hopes are reborn ! 

A ball rips his visor — his khaki shows red where 
another has torn. 

Will he live — will he last — will he make it? 

Helas ! And so near to the goal ! 
A second, he dies ! Then a third one ! A fourth ! 

Still the Germans take toll ! 
A fifth, magnifique ! It is magic ! How does he 

escape them ? He may . . . 
Yes, he does ! See, the match flares ! A rifle rings 

out from the wood and says "Nay !" 

Six, seven, eight, nine take their places, six, seven, 

eight, nine, brave their hail ; 
Six, seven, eight, nine — how we count them ! 

But the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth fail ! 
A tenth ! Sacre nom ! But these English are 

soldiers — they know how to try ; 
(He fumbles the place where his jaw was) — they 

show, too, how heroes can die. 

Ten we count — ten who ventured unquailing — 
ten there were — and the ten are no more ! 

Yet another salutes and superbly essays where the 
ten failed before. 



HERBERT KAUFMAN 149 

God of Battles, look down and protect him ! Lord, 
his heart is as Thine — let him live ! 

But the mitrailleuse sputters and stutters, and 
riddles him into a sieve. 

Then I thought of my sins, and sat waiting the 

charge that we could not withstand. 
And I thought of my beautiful Paris, and gave a last 

look at the land, 
At France, my belle France, in her glory of blue sky 

and green field and wood. 
Death with honor, but never surrender. And to 

die with such men — it was good. 

They are forming — the bugles are blaring — they 
will cross in a moment and then . . . 

When out of the line of the Royals (your island, mon 
ami, breeds men) 

Burst a private, a tawny-haired giant — it was hope- 
less, but, ciel ! how he ran ! 

Bon Dieu please remember the pattern, and make 
many more on his plan ! 

No cheer from our ranks, and the Germans, they 

halted in wonderment too ; 
See, he reaches the bridge ; ah ! he lights it ! 
I am dreaming, it cannot be true. 



150 HERBERT KAUFMAN 

Screams of rage! Fusillade! They have killed 
him! 
Too late though, the good work is done. 
By the valor of twelve English martyrs, the Hell- 
Gate of Soissons is won ! 

— Herbert Kaufman. 



JOYCE KILMER 151 



THE WHITE SHIPS AND THE RED 

With drooping sail and pennant 

That never a wind may reach, 
They float in sunless waters 

Beside a sunless beach. 
Their mighty masts and funnels 

Are white as driven snow, 
And with a pallid radiance 

Their ghostly bulwarks glow. 

Here is a Spanish galleon 

That once with gold was gay, 
Here is a Roman trireme 

Whose hues outshone the day. 
But Tyrian dyes have faded 

And prows that once were bright 
With rainbow stains wear only 

Death's livid, dreadful white. 

White as the ice that clove her 

That unf orgotten day, 
Among her pallid sisters 

The grim Titanic lay. 



152 JOYCE KILMER 

And through the leagues above her 
She looked, aghast, and said : 

" What is this living ship that comes 
Where every ship is dead ? " 

The ghostly vessels trembled 

From ruined stern to prow ; 
What was this thing of terror 

That broke their vigil now ? 
Down through the startled ocean 

A mighty vessel came, 
Not white, as all dead ships must be, 

But red, like living flame ! 

The pale green waves about her 

Were swiftly, strangely dyed, 
By the great scarlet stream that flowed 

From out her wounded side. 
And all her decks were scarlet 

And all her shattered crew. 
She sank among the white ghost ships 

And stained them through and through. 

The grim Titanic greeted her 
"And who art thou?" she said; 

"Why dost thou join our ghostly fleet 
Arrayed in living red ? 

We are the ships of sorrow 
Who spend the weary night, 



JOYCE KILMER 153 

Until the dawn of Judgment Day, 
Obscure and still and white." 

"Nay," said the scarlet visitor, 

"Though I sink through the sea 
A ruined thing that was a ship 

I sink not as did ye. 
For ye met with your destiny 

By storm or rock or fight, 
So through the lagging centuries 

Ye wear your robes of white. 

"But never crashing iceberg 

Nor honest shot of foe, 
Nor hidden reef has sent me 

The way that I must go. 
My wound that stains the waters, 

My blood that is like flame, 
Bear witness to a loathly deed, 

A deed without a name. 

"I went not forth to battle, 

I carried friendly men, 
The children played about my decks, 

The women sang — and then — 
And then — the sun blushed scarlet 

And Heaven hid its face, 
The world that God created 

Became a shameful place ! 



154 JOYCE KILMER 



"My wrong cries out for vengeance, 

The blow that sent me here 
Was aimed in Hell. My dying scream 

Has reached Jehovah's ear. 
Not all the seven oceans 

Shall wash away the stain ; 
Upon a brow that wears a crown 

I am the brand of Cain." 

When God's great voice assembles 

The fleet on Judgment Day, 
The ghosts of ruined ships will rise 

In sea and strait and bay. 
Though they have lain for ages 

Beneath the changeless flood, 
They shall be white as silver. 

But one — shall be like blood. 

— Joyce Kilmer. 



ALFRED KREYMBORG 155 



OVERHEARD IN AN ASYLUM 

And here we have another case, 
quite different from the last, 
another case quite different — 
Listen. 

Baby, drink. 
The war is over. 
Mother's breasts 
are round with milk. 

Baby, rest. 
The war is over. 
Only pigs 
slop over so. 

Baby, sleep. 
The war is over. 
Daddy's come 
with a German coin. 

Baby, dream. 
The war is over. 
You'll be a soldier 
too. 



156 ALFRED KREYMBORG 

We gave her the doll — 

Now there we have another case, 

quite different from — 

— Alfred Kreymborg. 



WINIFRED M. LETTS 157 



THE SPIRES OF OXFORD 

I saw the spires of Oxford 

As I was passing by, 
The gray spires of Oxford 

Against a pearl-gray sky. 
My heart was with the Oxford men 

Who went abroad to die. 

The years go fast in Oxford, 
The golden years and gay, 

The hoary Colleges look down 
On careless boys at play. 

But when the bugles sounded war 
They put their games away. 

They left the peaceful river, 
The cricket-field, the quad, 

The shaven lawns of Oxford 
To seek a bloody sod — 

They gave their merry youth away 
For country and for God. 

God rest you, happy gentlemen, 
Who laid your good lives down, 



158 WINIFRED M. LETTS 

Who took the khaki and the gun 

Instead of cap and gown. 
God bring you to a fairer place 

Than even Oxford town. 

— Winifred M. Letts. 



VACHEL LINSDAY 159 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN WALKS AT MIDNIGHT 

(In Springfield, Illinois) 

It is portentous, and a thing of state 
That here at midnight, in our little town 
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest, 
Near the old court-house pacing up and down. 

Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards 
He lingers where his children used to play, 
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones 
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away. 

A bronzed, lank man ! His suit of ancient black, 
A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl 
Make him the quaint great figure that men love, 
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all. 

He cannot sleep upon his hillside now. 

He is among us : — as in times before ! 

And we who toss and lie awake for long 

Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door. 

His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings. 
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep ? 
Too many peasants fight, they know not why, 
Too many homesteads in black terror weep. 



160 VACHEL LINDSAY 

The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart. 
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main. 
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now 
The bitterness, the folly and the pain. 

He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn 
Shall come ; — the shining hope of Europe free : 
The league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth 
Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea. 

It breaks his heart that kings must murder still, 
That all his hours of travail here for men 
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace 
That he may sleep upon his hill again ? 

— Vachel Lindsay. 



AMY LOWELL 161 



PATTERNS 

I walk down the garden paths, 

And all the daffodils 

Are blowing, and the bright blue squills. 

I walk down the patterned garden paths 

In my stiff, brocaded gown. 

With my powdered hair and jewelled fan, 

I too am a rare 

Pattern. As I wander down 

The garden paths. 

My dress is richly figured, 

And the train 

Makes a pink and silver stain 

On the gravel, and the thrift 

Of the borders. 

Just a plate of current fashion, 

Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes. 

Not a softness anywhere about me, 

Only whale-bone and brocade. 

And I sink on a seat in the shade 

Of a lime tree. For my passion 

Wars against the stiff brocade. 

The daffodils and squills 

M 



162 AMY LOWELL 



Flutter in the breeze 

As they please. 

And I weep ; 

For the lime tree is in blossom 

And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom. 

And the plashing of waterdrops 

In the marble fountain 

Comes down the garden paths. 

The dripping never stops. 

Underneath my stiffened gown 

Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble 

basin, 
A basin in the midst of hedges grown 
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding. 
But she guesses he is near, 
And the sliding of the water 
Seems the stroking of a dear 
Hand upon her. 

What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown ! 
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the 

ground. 
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the 

ground. 
I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the 

paths, 
And he would stumble after 
Bewildered by my laughter. 



AMY LOWELL 163 



I should see the sun flashing from his sword hilt and 

the buckles on his shoes. 
I would choose 

To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths, 
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted 

lover, 
Till he caught me in the shade, 
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body 

as he clasped me, 
Aching, melting, unafraid. 

With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops, 
And the plopping of the waterdrops, 
All about us in the open afternoon — 
I am very like to swoon 
With the weight of this brocade, 
For the sun sifts through the shade. 

Underneath the fallen blossom 

In my bosom, 

Is a letter I have hid. 

It was brought to me this morning by a rider from 
the Duke. 

" Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hart- 
well 

Died in action Thursday sen'night." 

As I read it in the white, morning sunlight, 

The letters squirmed like snakes. 

"Any answer, Madam ? " said my footman. 



164 AMY LOWELL 



"No," I told him. 

"See that the messenger takes some refreshment. 

No, no answer." 

And I walked into the garden, 

Up and down the patterned paths, 

In my stiff, correct brocade. 

The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in 

the sun, 
Each one. 

I stood upright too, 
Held rigid to the pattern 
By the stiffness of my gown. 
Up and down I walked, 
Up and down. 

In a month he would have been my husband. 

In a month, here, underneath this lime, 

We would have broke the pattern ; 

He for me, and I for him, 

He as Colonel, I as Lady, 

On this shady seat. 

He had a whim 

That sunlight carried blessing. 

And I answered, " It shall be as you have said." 

Now he is dead. 

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk 
Up and down 



AMY LOWELL 165 



The patterned garden paths 

In my stiff, brocaded gown. 

The squills and daffodils 

Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and 

to snow. 
I shall go 
Up and down, 
In my gown. 
Gorgeously arrayed, 
Boned and stayed. 
And the softness of my body will be guarded from 

embrace 
By each button, hook, and lace. 
For the man who should loose me is dead, 
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders, 
In a pattern called a war. 
Christ ! What are patterns for ? 

— Amy Lowell. 



166 E. V. LUCAS 



THE DEBT 

No more old England will they see — 
The men who've died for you and me. 

So lone and cold they lie ; but we, 
We still have life ; we still may greet 
Our pleasant friends in home and street ; 
We still have life, are able still 
To climb the turf of Bignor Hill, 
To see the placid sheep go by; ' 
To hear the sheep-dog's eager cry, 
To feel the sun, to taste the rain, 
To smell the Autumn scents again 
Beneath the brown and gold and red 
Which old October's brush has spread, 
To hear the robin in the lane, 
To look upon the English sky. 

So young they were, so strong and well, 

Until the bitter summons fell — 

Too young to die. 

Yet there on foreign soil they lie, 

So pitiful, with glassy eye 

And limbs all tumbled anyhow : 

Quite finished, now. 



E. V. LUCAS 167 

On every heart, lest we forget — 
Secure at home — engrave this debt ! 

Too delicate is flesh to be 

The shield that nations interpose 

'Twixt red Ambition and his foes — 

The bastion of Liberty. 

So beautiful their bodies were, 

Built with so exquisite a care : 

So young and fit and lithe and fair. 

The very flower of us were they, 

The very flower, but yesterday ! 

Yet now so pitiful they lie, 

Where love of country bade them hie 

To fight this fierce Caprice — and die. 

All mangled now, where shells have burst 

And lead and steel have done their worst ; 

The tender tissues ploughed away, 

The year's slow processes effaced : 

The Mother of us all, disgraced. 

And some leave wives behind, young wives; 

Already some have launched new lives : 

A little daughter, little son ; 

For thus this blundering world goes on. 

But never more will any see 

The old secure felicity, 

The kindnesses that made us glad 

Before the world went mad. 



168 E. V. LUCAS 



They'll never hear another bird, 
Another gay or loving word — 
Those men who lie so cold and lone, 
Far in a country not their own ; 
Those men who died for you and me, 
That England still might sheltered be 
And our smug lives be much the same 
(Although to live is almost shame). 

— E. V. Lucas. 



HABBERTON LULHAM 169 



HIS ONLY WAY 

I stood to-day high on the Downs 
And talked long with a shepherd lad ; 

I found him pondering by his sheep, 
Motionless, staring-eyed, and sad. 

But, leaning on his Pyecombe crook — 
Long polished by his father's hand — 

He told, with slow-tongued eagerness, 
This love-tale of his Sussex land : 

"Me and my mate, Dick, loved a girl, 
But he was always down at plough, 

And in and out the village, like, 
And — well, he 'listed, anyhow ; 

"While I bides up here 'long me sheep; 

And our girl, though she liked us two 
Equal it seemed, she took his ring — 

As, sure, she'd right enough to do. 

"Well, Dick he fought and met his death, 
Somewheres in Flanders, so 'tis said ; 

And I can't go to her, I feels, 
Because of Dick there lying dead. 



170 HABBERTON LULHAM 

"They do tell she gets pine and thin, 
And mopes and mourns that bitterly, 

But I can't go and say a word, 
Because he died for her, you see. 

"And day by day I sees it more — 
Fve pieced it all out clear and plain — 

As I must go like Dick has gone, 
Afore I looks at her again. 

"Old wall-eyed Bob, there, '11 pine awhile, 
And listen, maybe, for my call ; 

And master, he'll be proper mad, 
With lambing coming on, and all. 

" But there 'tis, and there ain't two ways : 
He went, and 'tis the only thing ; 

Else I shall grow to hate the hill 
And get ashamed o' shepherding. 

"That there's her window down below, 
Aside the copse, where I could see 

(It seems a score o' years agone) 
Our girl stand waving up to me. 

"Come Sunday, then, I'll 'list for sure 
(The same as you done, Dick, old lad !) 

Then, if I gets back, I can go 

Fair, like, and face her proud and glad." 

— Habberton Lulham. 



PERCY MAC KAY E 171 



CHRISTMAS, 1915 

Now is the midnight of the nations : dark 
Even as death, beside her blood-dark seas, 
Earth, like a mother in birth agonies, 
Screams in her travail, and the planets hark 
Her million-throated terror. Naked, stark, 
Her torso writhes enormous, and her knees 
Shudder against the shadowed Pleiades, 
Wrenching the night's imponderable arc. 

Christ ! What shall be delivered to the morn 
Out of these pangs, if ever indeed another 
Morn shall succeed this night, or this vast mother 
Survive to know the blood-spent offspring, torn 
From her racked flesh ? — What splendor from the 

smother ? 
What new-wing'd world, or mangled god still-born ? 

— Percy MacKaye. 



172 JAMES MACKERETH 



TO ENGLAND, OUR MOTHER 

A HYMN OF LOYALTY 

We are your children, O Mother, 

And tried by your testing, but true ; 
Sealed of your sign and none other ; 

Soul of the soul that is you ; 
Yours from the past, for the morrow ; 

Leal at your travail we bow, 
Mother made perfect by sorrow, 

With the pain-splendid brow. 

Yours was our freedom that blamed you, 

Our right that was wind to our hate 
Yours, and the swift wrath that named you. 

Mother, we love, — and we wait. 
We that you favored or slighted, 

Mother, are all of us peers 
In our will that your wrong shall be righted, 

In our love at the sight of your tears. 

Ah, deep in our hearts is the sweetness 
Of your fields where as infants we trod, 

When our ills were as swallows for fleetness, 
In the green-curtained play-grounds of God. 



JAMES MACKERETH 173 

Fond days that are joys mid our weeping 
Are set mid your meadows and bowers ; 

Our loves that lie dead in your keeping 
You fondle with grass and with flowers. 

Ah, yours was the beauty that blessed us ; 

The kiss when our troubles were dumb ; 
The hand that in childhood caressed us — 

Oh, Mother ! you need us. We come ! 
Love-gifts from our hell or our heaven 

Take, take them and purge with your pain ; 
All, all our love's best take, and leaven 

Our life till 'tis lovely again, — 

And true to your height, Mother, tender 

And true to the best in us all ! 
We have pined here alone in your splendor ; 

But we speed to your pain lest you fall. 
Ask : we give ! Is it life or the other ? 

Is it death ? Take us whole. We are come 
For the sake of our dream of you, Mother, 

Whose love we have longed for at home ! 

Oh, Lord of our fathers before us, 

We have turned from the light of Thy word, 
We and this Mother who bore us : 

Dread God, we were proud : we have erred. 



174 JAMES MACKERETH 



We plead : on ourselves, not our brother, 
Lay now the stern weight of Thy rod ; 
Grind us small with Thy grief ; — but our Mother 

Spare, spare her, O God ! 

— James A. M acker eth. 



JOHN MASEFIELD 175 



THE ISLAND OF SKYROS 

Here, where we stood together, we three men, 
Before the war had swept us to the East 
Three thousand miles away, I stand again 
And hear the bells, and breathe, and go to feast. 
We trod the same path, to the self-same place, 
Yet here I stand, having beheld their graves, 
Skyros whose shadows the great seas erase, 
And Seddul Bahr that ever more blood craves. 
So, since we communed here, our bones have been 
Nearer, perhaps, than they again will be, 
Earth and the world-wide battle lie between, 
Death lies between, and friend-destroying sea. 
Yet here, a year ago, we talked and stood 
As I stand now, with pulses beating blood. 

I saw her like a shadow on the sky 

In the last light, a blur upon the sea, 

Then the gale's darkness put the shadow by, 

But from one grave that island talked to me ; 

And, in the midnight, in the breaking storm, 

I saw its blackness and a blinking light, 

And thought, "So death obscures your gentle form, 

So memory strives to make the darkness bright ; 



176 JOHN MASE FIELD 

And, in that heap of rocks, your body lies, 
Part of the island till the planet ends, 
My gentle comrade, beautiful and wise, 
Part of this crag this bitter surge offends, 
While I, who pass, a little obscure thing, 
War with this force, and breathe, and am its king." 

— John Masefield. 

(See note on Rupert Brooke, p. 38.) 



EDGAR LEE MASTERS 177 



O GLORIOUS FRANCE 

You have become a forge of snow white fire, 

A crucible of molten steel, O France ! 

Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn 

And fade in light for you, O glorious France ! 

They pass through meteor changes with a song 

Which to all islands and all continents 

Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame, 

Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child, 

Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's 

power, 
Nor many days spent in a chosen work, 
Nor honored merit, nor the patterned theme 
Of daily labor, nor the crowns nor wreaths 
Of seventy years. 

These are not all of life, 
O France, whose sons amid the rolling thunder 
Of cannon stand in trenches where the dead 
Clog the ensanguined ice. But life to these 
Prophetic and enraptured souls is vision, 
And the keen ecstasy of fated strife, 
And divination of the loss as gain, 
And reading mysteries with brightened eyes 

N 



178 EDGAR LEE MASTERS 

In fiery shock and dazzling pain before 

The orient splendor of the face of Death, 

As a great light beside a shadowy sea ; 

And in a high will's strenuous exercise, 

Where the warmed spirit finds its fullest strength 

And is no more afraid. And in the stroke 

Of azure lightning when the hidden essence 

And shifting meaning of man's spiritual worth 

And mystical significance in time 

Are instantly distilled to one clear drop 

Which mirrors earth and heaven. 

This is life 
Flaming to heaven in a minute's span 
When the breath of battle blows the smoldering 

spark. 
And across these seas 

We who cry Peace and treasure life and cling 
To cities, happiness, or daily toil 
For daily bread, or trail the long routine 
Of seventy years, taste not the terrible wine 
Whereof you drink, who drain and toss the cup 
Empty and ringing by the finished feast ; 
Or have it shaken from your hand by sight 
Of God against the olive woods. 

As Joan of Arc amid the apple trees 

With sacred joy first heard the voices, then 



EDGAR LEE MASTERS 179 

Obeying plunged at Orleans in a field 

Of spears and lived her dream and died in fire, 

Thou, France, hast heard the voices and hast lived 

The dream and known the meaning of the dream, 

And read its riddle : How the soul of man 

May to one greatest purpose make itself 

A lens of clearness, how it loves the cup 

Of deepest truth, and how its bitterest gall 

Turns sweet to soul's surrender. 

And you say : 
Take days for repetition, stretch your hands 
For mocked renewal of familiar things : 
The beaten path, the chair beside the window, 
The crowded street, the task, the accustomed sleep, 
And waking to the task, or many springs 
Of lifted cloud, blue water, flowering fields — 
The prison house grows close no less, the feast 
A place of memory sick for senses dulled 
Down to the dusty end where pitiful Time 
Grown weary cries Enough ! 

— Edgar Lee Masters. 



180 DR. JOHN MCRAE 



IN FLANDERS FIELDS 

(Reprinted by the special permission of the proprietors 
of Punch.) 

In Flanders fields tfie poppies blow 

Between the crosses, row on row, 
That mark our place, and in the sky, 
The larks, still bravely singing, fly, 

Scarce heard amid the guns below. 

We are the dead ; short days ago 

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, 
Loved and were loved, and now we lie 
In Flanders fields. 

Take up our quarrel with the foe ! 
To you from failing hands we throw 
The torch ; be yours to hold it high ! 
If ye break faith with us who die 
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow 
In Flanders fields. 

— John McRae. 



MISS M. G. MEUGENS 181 



THE FLEETS 

Are you out with the fleets through the long, dark 
night, 
Admiral Drake ? 
Are you keeping watch, when with never a light 
They patrol the seas and wait for a fight ? 

In that far South Sea were you standing by, 

Admiral Drake ? 
Did your masthead catch that wireless cry ? 
Did you in sorrow watch them die ? 

Once more at the guns do your gunners strain, 

Admiral Drake ? 
Do their voices ring o'er the decks again, 
"Have at them, boys I" in the old refrain? 

When the shining death leaps through the wave, 

Admiral Drake, 
Are your boats all out in a rush to save ? 
Do you stand to salute the death of the brave ? 

Are there others out on the heaving blue, 
Admiral Drake ? 



182 MISS M. G. MEUGENS 

Are Collingwood, Blake and Nelson, too, 
In their high-decked ships, along with you ? 

Oh, seamen of old, the shadowy gates 
Swing wide to let you through, 
And out o'er the seas your galleons sweep 
To fight for the flag anew. 

— M . G. Meugens. 



ALICE MEYNELL 183 



SUMMER IN ENGLAND, 1914 

On London fell a clearer light ; 

Caressing pencils of the sun 
Defined the distances, the white 

Houses transfigured one by one, 
The " long, unlovely street" impearled. 
O what a sky has walked the world ! 

Most happy year ! And out of town 
The hay was prosperous, and the wheat ; 

The silken harvest climbed the down ; 
Moon after moon was heavenly sweet, 

Stroking the bread within the sheaves, 

Looking twixt apples and their leaves. 

And while this rose made round her cup, 
The armies died convulsed ; and when 

This chaste young silver sun went up 
Softly, a thousand shattered men, 

One wet corruption, heaped the plain, 

After a league-long throb of pain. 

Flower following tender flower, and birds, 
And berries ; and benignant skies 



184 ALICE MEYNELL 

Made thrive the serried flocks and herds. 
Yonder are men shot through the eyes, 
And children crushed. Love, hide thy face 
From man's unpardonable race. 

A Reply 

Who said " No man hath greater love than this 

To die to serve his friend ? " 
So these have loved us all unto the end. 
Chide thou no more, O thou unsacrificed ! 
The soldier dying dies upon a kiss, 

The very kiss of Christ. 

— Alice Meynell. 



J. E. MIDDLE TON 185 



OFF HELIGOLAND 

Ghostly ships in a ghostly sea, 

(Here's to Drake in the Spanish main !) 
Hark to the turbines, running free, 

Oil-cups full and the orders plain. 
Plunging into the misty night, 

Surging into the rolling brine, 
Never a word, and never a light, 

— This for England that love of mine ! 

Look ! a gleam on the starboard bow, 

(Here's to the Fighting Temeraire !) 
Quartermaster be ready now, 

Two points over, and keep her there. 
Ghostly ships — let the foemen grieve. 

Yon's the Admiral tight and trim, 
And one more — with an empty sleeve — 

Standing a little aft of him ! 

Slender, young in a coat of blue, 
(Here's to the Agamemnon's pride !) 

Out of the mists that long he knew, 
Out of the Victory, where he died, 



186 J. E. MIDDLETON 

Here to the battle-front he came. 

See, he smiles in his gallant way ! 
Ghostly ships in a ghostly game, 

Roaring guns on a ghostly day ! 

There in his white silk smalls he stands, 

(Here's to Nelson, with three times three !) 
Coming out of the misty lands 

Far, far over the misty sea. 
Now the Foe is a crippled wreck, 

Limping out of the deadly fight. 
Smiling yond on the quarterdeck 

Stands the Spirit, all silver-bright. 

— J. E. Middleton. 



RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL 187 



HE WENT FOR A SOLDIER 

He marched away with a blithe young score of him 

With the first volunteers, 
Clear-eyed and clean and sound to the core of him, 

Blushing under the cheers. 
They were fine, new flags that swung a-flying there, 
Oh, the pretty girls he glimpsed a-crying there, 

Pelting him with pinks and with roses — 

Billy, the Soldier Boy ! 

Not very clear in the kind young heart of him 

What the fuss was about, 
But the flowers and the flags seemed part of him — 

The music drowned his doubt. 
It's a fine, brave sight they were a-coming there 
To the gay, bold tune they kept a-drumming there, 

While the boasting fifes shrilled jauntily — 

Billy, the Soldier Boy ! 

Soon he is one with the blinding smoke of it — 

Volley and curse and groan : 
Then he has done with the knightly joke of it — 

It's rending flesh and bone. 



188 RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL 

There are pain-crazed animals a-shrieking there 
And a warm blood stench that is a-reeking there ; 

He fights like a rat in a corner — 

Billy, the Soldier Boy ! 

There he lies now, like a ghoulish score of him, 

Left on the field for dead : 
The ground all around is smeared with the gore of 
him — 

Even the leaves are red. 
The Thing that was Billy lies a-dying there, 
Writhing and a-twisting and a-crying there; 

A sickening sun grins down on him — 

Billy, the Soldier Boy ! 

Still not quite clear in the poor, wrung heart of him 

What the fuss was about, 
See where he lies — or a ghastly part of him — 

While life is oozing out : 
There are loathsome things he sees a-crawling there ; 
There are hoarse-voiced crows he hears a-calling 
there, 

Eager for the foul feast spread for them — 

Billy, the Soldier Boy ! 

How much longer, Lord, shall we bear it all f 

How many more red years? 
Story it and glory it and share it all, 

In seas of blood and tears f 



RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL 189 



They are braggart attitudes we've worn so long; 
They are tinsel platitudes we've sworn so long — 

We who have turned the Devil's Grindstone, 

Borne with the hell called War! 

— Ruth Comfort Mitchell. 



190 HARRIET MONROE 



ON THE PORCH 

As I lie roofed in, screened in, 
From the pattering rain, 
The summer rain — 
As I lie 
Snug and dry, 
And hear the birds complain : 

Oh, billow on billow, 
Oh, roar on roar, 
Over me wash 
The seas of war. 
Over me — down — down — 
Lunges and plunges 
The huge gun with its one blind eye, 
The armored train, 
And, swooping out of the sky, 
The aeroplane. 
Down — down — 
The army proudly swinging 
Under gay flags, 

The glorious dead heaped up like rags, 
A church with bronze bells ringing, 
A city all towers, 



HARRIET MONROE 191 

Gardens of lovers and flowers, 

The round world swinging 

In the light of the sun : 

All broken, undone, 

All down — under 

Black surges of thunder . . . 

Oh, billow on billow 
Oh, roar on roar, 
Over me wash 
The seas of war . . . 

As I lie roofed in, screened in, 
From the pattering rain, 
The summer rain — 
As I lie 
Snug and dry, 
And hear the birds complain. 

— Harriet Monroe. 



192 N. M. H. 



A. S. K. 

July U, 1915 

You must not mourn for him, he that went out to 

France, 
He, like the rest of them, clear-minded, open-eyed, 
It was for him to decide ; 
He took his chance ; 
And he is dead in France. 

Oh, do not mourn for him, he heard his country's 

call, 
And answering, gave all he had to give ; 
Yet though they die, they live ; 
Not dead at all 
Those who obeyed that call. 

No, no, it is not wasted, all that love and thought, 
It is embodied in all truth and right ; 
These pass not out to-night 
Nor turn to nought — 
Labor and love and thought. 

N. M. H. 



E. NESBIT 193 



A SONG OF PEACE AND HONOR 

We, men of England, children of her might, 
With all our mother's record-roll of glory, 

Great with her greatness, noble with her name, 
Drank with our mother's milk our mother's 
story, 
And in our veins the splendor of her fame 
Made strong our blood and bright ; 
And to her absent sons her name has been 
Familiar music heard in distant lands, 
Heart of our heart, and sinews of our hands, 
England, our Mother, our Mistress and our 
Queen ! 

Out of the thunderous echoes of the past, 

Through the gold dust of centuries, we hear 
Her voice : " O children of a royal line, 

Sons of my heart who hold your England dear, 
Mine was the past, make ye the future mine 
All glorious to the last !" 
And, as we hear her, cowards grow to men, 

And men to heroes, and the voice of fear 

Is as a whisper in a deaf man's ear 
And the dead past is quick in us again. 



194 E. NESBIT 



Her robe is woven of glory and of renown, 
Hers are the golden laden argosies 

And lordship of the wild and watery ways, 
Her flag is blown across the utmost seas ; 

Dead nations built her throne and kingdoms 
blaze 
For jewels in her crown. 
Her empire like a girdle doth enfold 

The world ; her feet on ancient foes are set ; 
She wears the steel-wrought blood-bright amulet 
Wrought by her children in the days of old. 

Yet in a treasury of such gems as these, 

Which power and sovereignty and kingship fill 

To the vast limit of the circling sun, 
England, our Mother, in her heart holds still 
As her most precious jewel, save only one, 

The priceless pearl of peace — 

Peace, plucked from out of the very heart of war 
Through the long agony of strenuous years, 
Made pure by blood and sanctified by tears, 

A pearl to lie where England's treasures are. 

O peaceful English lanes, all white with may, 
O English meadows where the grass grows tall, 
O red-roofed village, field and farm and fold 
Where the long shadows of the elm-trees fall 
On the wide pastures which the sun calls gold, 
And twilight dew calls grey ; 



E. NESBIT 195 



These are the home, the happy cradle place 
Of every man who has our English tongue, 
Sprung from those loins from which our sires have 
sprung, 

Heirs of the glory of our mighty race. 

Brothers, we hold the pearl of priceless worth, 
How dare we then to cast our pearl aside ? 
Is it not more to us than all things are ? 
Nay, peace is precious as the world is wide, 
But England's honor is more precious far 

Than all the heavens and earth. 

Were honor outcast from her supreme place 

Our pearl of peace no more a pearl would shine, 
But, trampled under foot of dogs and swine, 

Rot in the mire of a deserved disgrace. 

So, for our Mother's honor, since it must, 
Let peace be lost, but lost the worthier way, 

Not trampled down, but given, for her sake, 
Who forged of many an iron yesterday 

The golden song that gold-tongued Fame shall 
wake 
When we are dust, in dust ; 
For life and love and death and praise and blame, 
And all the world, even to our very land, 
Weighed in the balance are as a grain of sand 
Against the honor of the English name ! 

— E. Nesbit. 



196 J. A. NICKLIN 



THE FISHER-LAD 

"Farewell and good-bye to you, maiden of Teifi, 
Farewell and good-bye to you, dear Teifi maid ! 

The jolly-boat's waiting, I'm off in a jiffy, 
To scouting and cruising, to chase and to raid. 

"Ah, cariad, say, when you see in the offing, 
Dark on the blue waters of Cardigan Bay, 

Our smoke-stack just showing, then will you be 
doffing 
Your bonnet to wave us a parting ' huzzay' ? 

"Once homeward I'd run, tho' the black scud was 
flying, 
And the breakers were howling like fiends on 
our lee, 
With every stitch set, ever danger defying, 

For, anwyl, I know that you watched on the quay. 

"In vain will you watch for your fisher-lad's 
skiff, he 
Is tracking the death that the foeman has laid ; 
If Death is the end of it, dear maid of Teifi, 
Farewell and good-bye to you, dear Teifi maid !" 

— J. A. Nicklin. 



ALFRED NOYES 197 



THE SEARCHLIGHTS 

Political morality differs from individual morality, be- 
cause there is no power above the State. 

— General von Bernhardi. 

Shadow by shadow, stripped for fight 
The lean black cruisers search the sea. 

Night-long their level shafts of light 
Revolve, and find no enemy. 

Only they know each leaping wave 

May hide the lightning, and their grave. 

And in the land they guard so well 
Is there no silent watch to keep ? 

An age is dying, and the bell 

Rings midnight on a vaster deep. 

But over all its waves, once more 

The searchlights move, from shore to shore. 

And captains that we thought were dead, 
And dreamers that we thought were dumb, 

And voices that we thought were fled, 
Arise, and call us, and we come ; 

And "search in thine own soul," they cry; 

"For there, too, lurks thine enemy." 



198 ALFRED NOYES 

Search for the foe in thine own soul, 
The sloth, the intellectual pride ; 

The trivial jest that veils the goal 
For which our fathers lived and died ; 

The lawless dreams, the cynic Art, 

That rend thy nobler self apart. 

Not far, not far into the night, 
These level swords of light can pierce ; 

Yet for her faith does England fight, 
Her faith in this our universe, 

Believing Truth and Justice draw 

From founts of everlasting law ; 

The law that rules the stars, our stay, 

Our compass through the world's wide sea, 

The one sure light, the one sure way, 
The one firm base of Liberty ; 

The one firm road that men have trod 

Through Chaos to the throne of God. 

Therefore a Power above the State, 
The unconquerable Power returns. 

The fire, the fire that made her great 
Once more upon her altar burns, 

Once more, redeemed and healed and whole, 

She moves to the Eternal Goal. 

— Alfred Noyes. 



0. M. 199 



MASTER AND PUPIL 
(To J. F. R.) 

Two years ago I taught him Greek, 

And used to give him hints on bowling : 
His classics were a trifle weak ; 

His "action" needed some controlling. 
Convinced of my superior nous 

I thought him crude, and I was rather 
Inclined, as master of his House, 

To treat him like a heavy father. 

I wrote the usual reports 

Upon his "lack of concentration"; 
Though certainly at winter Sports 

He did not earn this condemnation. 
I took him out San Moritz way 

One Christmas, and our roles inverted, 
For in the land of ski and sleigh 

His mastery was soon asserted. 

I thought him just a normal lad, 
Well-mannered, wholesome, unaffected ; 

The makings of a Galahad 

In him I had not yet detected ; 



200 0. M. 

And when I strove to mend his style, 

Blue-penciling his exercises, 
I little guessed that all the while 

His soul was ripe for high emprises. 

Two years ago ! and here I am, 

Rejected as unfit ; still trying 
(As Verrall taught me on the Cam) 

To make Greek Plays electrifying. 
And he who, till he was eighteen, 

Found life one long excuse for laughing, 
For eighteen solid months has been 

Continuously "strafed" or "strafing." 

He writes me letters from the front 

Which prove, although he doesn't know it, 
That though his words are plain and blunt, 

He has the vision of a poet ; 
And lately, on his eight days' rest, 

After long months of hard campaigning, 
He came, and lo ! an angel guest 

I was aware of entertaining. 

About himself he seldom spoke, 
But often of his widowed mother, 

And how she nobly bore the stroke 
That robbed them of his sailor brother. 



O. M. 201 

And still, from loyalty or whim, 

He would defer to my opinion, 
Unconscious how I envied him 

His hard-earned gift of self-dominion. 

For he had faced the awful King 

Of Shadows in the darksome Valley, 
And scorned the terrors of his sting 

In many a perilous storm and sally. 
Firm in the faith that never tires 

Or thinks that man is God-forsaken, 
From war's fierce seven-times-heated fires 

He had emerged unseared, unshaken. 

There are, alas ! no sons of mine 

To serve their country in her trial, 
Embattled in the cause divine 

Of sacrifice and self-denial ; 
But if there were, I could not pray 

That God might shield them from disaster 
More strongly than I plead to-day 

For this my pupil and my master. 

— 0. M. 



202 "OBSERVER, ROYAL FLYING CORPS 



TWO PICTURES 

Dawn. . . . 

And the dewy plain 

Awakes to life and sound — 

Where on the flying-ground 

The ghostly hangars blaze with lights again. 

The giant birds of prey 
Creep forth to a new day, 
And one by one, 
As morning gilds the dome, 
Leave the grey aerodrome — 

— The day's begun. 

Dusk. . . . 

And the vanish'd sun 

Still streaks the evening skies : 

Below, the prone Earth lies 

Darken'd, wherever warring Night has won. 

The 'planes, returning, show 
Deep black in the afterglow, 
And one by one 

Drop down from the higher airs, 
— Down, down the invisible stairs — 

— The day is done. 

— " Observer, Royal Flying Corps. " 



WILL H. OGILVIE 203 



CANADIANS 

With arrows on their quarters and with numbers on 

their hoofs, 
With the trampling sound of twenty that re-echoes 

in the roofs, 
Low of crest and dull of coat, wan and wild of eye, 
Through our English village the Canadians go by. 

Shying at a passing cart, swerving from a car, 
Tossing up an anxious head to flaunt a snowy star, 
Racking at a Yankee gait, reaching at the rein, 
Twenty raw Canadians are tasting life again ! 

Hollow-necked and hollow-flanked, lean of rib and hip, 
Strained and sick and weary with the wallow of the 

ship, 
Glad to smell the turf again, hear the robin's call, 
Tread again the country road they lost at Montreal ! 

Fate may bring them dule and woe; better steeds 

than they 
Sleep beside the English guns a hundred leagues 

away; 
But till war hath need of them lightly lie their reins, 
Softly fall the feet of them along the English lanes. 

— Will H. Ogilvie. 



204 MAJOR SYDNEY OSWALD 



THE DEAD SOLDIER 

Thy dear brown eyes which were as depths where 
truth 
Lay bowered with frolic joy, but yesterday 
Shone with the fire of thy so guileless youth, 
Now ruthless death has dimmed and closed for 
aye. 

Those sweet red lips, that never knew the stain 
Of angry words or harsh, or thoughts unclean, 

Have sung their last gay song. Never again 
Shall I the harvest of their laughter glean. 

The goodly harvest of thy laughing mouth 
Is garnered in ; and lo ! the golden grain 

Of all thy generous thoughts, which knew no drouth 
Of meanness, and thy tender words remain 

Stored in my heart ; and though I may not see 

Thy peerless form nor hear thy voice again, 
The memory lives of what thou wast to me, 

We knew great love. . . . We have not lived in 
vain. 

— Sydney Oswald. 
(Major, King's Royal Rifle Corps.) 



BARRY PAIN 205 



THE KAISER AND GOD 

("I rejoice with you in Wilhelm's first victory. How 
magnificently God supported him!" — Telegram from the 
Kaiser to the Crown Princess.) 

Led by Wilhelm, as you tell, 
God has done extremely well ; 
You with patronizing nod 
Show that you approve of God. 
Kaiser, face a question new — 
This — does God approve of you ? 

Broken pledges, treaties torn, 
Your first page of war adorn ; 
We on fouler things must look 
Who read further in that book, 
Where you did in time of war 
All that you in peace forswore, 
Where you, barbarously wise, 
Bade your soldiers terrorize, 

Where you made — the deed was fine — 

Women screen your firing line. 

Villages burned down to dust, 

Torture, murder, bestial lust, 

Filth too foul for printer's ink, 

Crimes from which the apes would shrink — 



206 BARRY PAIN 



Strange the offerings that you press 
On the God of Righteousness ! 

Kaiser, when you'd decorate 
Sons or friends who serve your State, 
Not that Iron Cross bestow, 
But a Cross of Wood, and so — 
So remind the world that you 
Have made Calvary anew. 

Kaiser, when you'd kneel in prayer 
Look upon your hands, and there 
Let that deep and awful stain 
From the blood of children slain 
Burn your very soul with shame, 
Till you dare not breathe that Name 
That now you glibly advertise — 
God as one of your allies. 

Impious braggart, you forget ; 
God is not your conscript yet ; 
You shall learn in dumb amaze 
That His ways are not your ways, 
That the mire through which you trod 
Is not the high white road of God, 

To Whom, whichever way the combat rolls, 
We, fighting to the end, commend our souls. 

— Barry Pain. 



JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY 207 



MEN HAVE WINGS AT LAST 

(Air-Craft and the War) 

"Wolf, Wolf -stay-at-home, 

Prowler, — scout, 

Clanless and castaways, 

And ailing with the drought, 

Out from your hidings, — hither to the call ; 

Lift up your eyes to the high wind-fall ! 

Lift up your eyes from the poisoned spring ; 

Overhead, — overhead ! The dragon Thing, 

— What should it bring ? 

— Poising on the wing?" 

"Wolf, Wolf, Old one, I saw it, even I. 
Yesterday, yesterday, the Thing came by 
Prowling at the outpost of the last lean wood, 
By the gray waste ashes where the minster stood ; 
And out through the cloister where the belfry fronts 
The market-place, and the town was once ; 
High, — high above the bright wide square 
And the folk all flocking together, unaware, 
The Thing-with-the-wings came there. 

Brother Vulture saw it 

And called me, as it passed : 



208 JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY 

'Look and see, look and see, — 
Men have wings at last.' 

"By the eyeless belfry I saw it, overhead, 

Poised like a hawk, — like a storm unshed. 

Near the huddled doves there, from the shattered 

cote, 
I watched too. . . . And it smote ! 

" Not a threat of thunder, — not an armed man, 
Where the fury struck, and the fleet fire ran. — 
But girl-child, man-child, mothers and their young, 
Newborn of woman, with milk upon its tongue ; 
Nursling where it clung. 

" Not a talon reached they, yet, the lords of prey ! 
But left the red dregs there, rent and cast away ; 
Fled from the spoils there, scattered things accurst : 

— It was not for hunger ; 
It was not for thirst. 

"From the eyeless belfry, 
Brother Vulture laughed : 
' This is all we have to see 
For his master-crajt f 

— Old ones, and lean ones, 
Never now to fast, 

Men have wings at last ! ' 



JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY 209 

"Brought they any tidings for us from the Sun?" 

"No, my chief, not one." 
"Left they not a road-sign, how the way was won?" 

"No, my chief, none. 
But girl-child, man-child, creature yet unborn, 
Doe and fawn together so, weltering and torn, 
Newborn of woman where the flag-stones bled ; 
(Better can the vultures do, for the shamed dead.) 
Road-dust sobbing where the lightning burst — 

It was not for hunger ; 

It was not for thirst." 

"Brought they not some token that the stars look 
on?" 

— "No, my chief, none." 

"Never yet a message from the highways over- 
head?" 

— "Brother, I have said." 

"Old years, gray years, years of growing things, 
We have toiled and kept the watch with our wonder- 

ings; 
But to see what things shouldjbe, when that Men 

had wings. 

" Sea-mark, sea-wall, — ships above the tide ; 
Mine and mole-way under-earth, to have its hidden 

pride ; — 
Not enough, not enough ; more and more beside ! 

p 



210 JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY 

"Bridle, for our proud-of-mane, — then the triple 

yoke; 
Ox-goad and lash again, and bonded fellow-folk ! 
Not enough ; not enough ; — for his master-stroke. 
Thunder trapped and muttering and led away for 

thrall ; 
Lightnings leashed together then, at his beck and 

call; 
Not enough ; not enough ; — for his Wherewithal ! 

" He must look with evil eye 
On the spaces of the sky : 

He must scheme, and try ! — 
While all we, with dread and awe, 
Sheathing and unsheathing claw, 

Watch apart, and prophesy 
That we never saw. — 

"Wings, to seek his more-and-more 

Where we knew us blind ; 
Wings to make him conqueror, 

With his master-mind ; 
Wings, that he out-watch, — out-soar, 

Eagle and his kind ! 

"Lo, the dream fulfilled at last! — And the dread 

outgrown, 
Broken, as a bird's heart ; — fallen as a stone 
.... What was he, to make afraid ? 



JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY 211 

— Hating all that he had made ? 

— Hating all his own. 

"Scatter to your strongholds, till the race is run. 

Doe and fawn together, so, soon it will be done. 

Never now, never now, Ship without a mast, 

In the harbors of the Sun, do you make fast ! 
But the floods shall cleanse again 
Every blackened trail of Men, — 
Men with wings, at last ! " 

— Josephine Preston Peabody. 



212 STEPHEN PHILLIPS 



REVENGE FOR RHEIMS 

Thou Permanence amid all things that pass ! 
Unchanging Thought amid the drift of change ; 
Thou Rally of the Soul in days of dross ; 
How art Thou fallen ! 

Thou Prayer, that ever-rising, yet remained, 
That for seven hundred years didst sing and soar, 
Spirit with wings outspread tip-toe on Earth, 
How art Thou fallen ! 

Thou Vision frozen, and Thou Sigh transfixed ; 
Thou Camp of dreams, Thou Fort of faith un- 

stormed, 
Time-worn, yet wearying tVard Eternity, 
How art Thou fallen ! 

Thou wast to France her Inspiration old, 
Thou hadst for ivy earliest memories ; 
From Thee her Knights, her Angels long looked down ; 
How art Thou fallen ! 

What vengeance for Thy ruin shall She hurl ? 
O, be that vengeance, that the ruin stand, 
Only those Choirs for ever unrestored ! 
Ever unfallen ! 

— Stephen Phillips. 



MARJORIE L. C. PICKTHALL 213 



CANADA TO ENGLAND 

Great names of thy great captains gone before 
Beat with our blood, who have that blood of thee 
Raleigh and Grenville, Wolfe, and all the free 
Fine souls who dared to front a world in war. 
Such only may outreach the envious years 
Where feebler crowns and fainter stars remove, 
Nurtured in one remembrance and one love 
Too high for passion and too stern for tears. 

O little isle our fathers held for home, 
Not, not alone thy standards and thy hosts 
Lead where thy sons shall follow, Mother Land : 
Quick as the north wind, ardent as the foam, 
Behold, behold the invulnerable ghosts 
Of all past greatnesses about thee stand. 

— Marjorie L. C. Pickthall. 



214 JESSIE POPE 



SOCKS 

Shining pins that dart and click 
In the fireside's sheltered peace 

Check the thoughts that cluster thick — 
20 'plain and then decrease. 

He was brave — well, so was I — 

Keen and merry, but his lip 
Quivered when he said good-bye — 

Purl the seam-stitch, purl and slip. 

Never used to living rough, 

Lots of things he'd got to learn ; 

Wonder if he's warm enough — 
Knit 2, catch 2 y knit 1, turn. 

Hark ! The paper-boys again ! 

Wish that shout could be suppressed ; 
Keeps one always on the strain — 

Knit off 9, and slip the rest. 

Wonder if he's fighting now, 

What he's done an' where he's been ; 
He'll come out on top, somehow — 

Slip 1, knit 2, purl 14. 

— Jessie Pope. 



CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 215 



TO SHAKESPEARE, 1916 

With what white wrath must turn thy bones, 
What stern amazement flame thy dust, 

To feel so near this England's heart 
The outrage of the assassin's thrust. 

But surely, too, thou art consoled, — 

Who knewest thy stalwart breed so well, — 

To see us rise from sloth and go, 

Plain and unbragging, through this hell. 

And surely, too, thou art assured ! 

Hark how that grim and gathering beat 
Draws upwards from the ends of earth — 

The tramp, tramp of thy kindred's feet ! 

— Charles G. D. Roberts. 



216 A. MARY F. ROBINSON 



BELGIUM THE BAR-LASS 

The night was still. The King sat with the Queen. 
She sang. Her maidens spun. A peaceful scene. 

Sudden, wild echoes shake the castle wall. 
Their foes come crashing through the outer hall. 

They rush like thunder down the gallery floor . . . 
. . . Someone has stolen the bolt that bars the 
door! 

No pin to hold the loops, no stick, no stave, 
Nothing ! An open door, an open grave ! 

Then Catherine Bar-lass thrust her naked arm 
(A girl's arm, white as milk, alive and warm) 

Right through the loops from which the bolt was 

gone : 
" 'Twill hold (she said) until they break the bone — 

My King, you have one instant to prepare!" 
She said no more, because the thrust was there. 



Oft have I heard that tale of Scotland's King 
The Poet, and Kate the Bar-lass. (Men will sing 



A. MARY F. ROBINSON 217 

For aye the deed one moment brings to birth — 
Such moments are the ransom of our Earth.) 

Brave Belgium, Bar-lass of our western world, 
Who, when the treacherous Prussian tyrant hurled 

His hordes against our peace, thrust a slight hand, 
So firm, to bolt our portals and withstand, 

Whatever prove the glory of our affray, 
Thine arm, thy heart, thine act have won the day ! 

— A. Mary F. Robinson. 
(Madame Duelaux.) 



218 EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON 



CASSANDRA 

I heard one who said : " Verily, 

What word have I for children here ? 

Your Dollar is your only Word, 
The wrath of It your only fear. 

"You build it altars tall enough 
To make you see, but you are blind ; 

You cannot leave it long enough 
To look before you or behind. 

"When Reason beckons you to pause, 
You laugh and say that you know best ; 

But what it is you know, you keep 
As dark as ingots in a chest. 

"You laugh and answer, 'We are young; 

O leave us now, and let us grow.' — 
Not asking how much more of this 

Will Time endure or Fate bestow. 

"Because a few complacent years 
Have made your peril of your pride, 

Think you that you are to go on 
Forever pampered and untried ? 



EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON 219 

"What lost eclipse of history, 
What bivouac of the marching stars, 

Has given the sign for you to see 
Millenniums and last great wars ? 

"What unrecorded overthrow 
Of all the world has ever known, 

Or even been, has made itself 
So plain to you, and you alone ? 

"Your Dollar, Dove and Eagle make 

A Trinity that even you 
Rate higher than you rate yourselves ; 

It pays, it flatters, and it's new. 

"And though your very flesh and blood 
Be what your Eagle eats and drinks, 

You'll praise him for the best of birds, 
Not knowing what the Eagle thinks. 

"The power is yours, but not the sight ; 

You see not upon what you tread ; 
You have the ages for your guide, 

But not the wisdom to be led. 

"Think you to tread forever down 

The merciless old verities ? 
And are you never to have eyes 

To see the world for what it is ? 



220 EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON 



"Are you to pay for what you have 
With all you are ? " — No other word 

We caught, but with a laughing crowd 
Moved on. None heeded, and few heard. 
— Edwin Arlington Robinson. 



SIR RONALD ROSS 221 



SHAKESPEARE, 1916 

Now when the sinking Sun reeketh with blood, 
And the gore-gushing vapors rent by him 
Rend him and bury him : now the World is dim 
As when great thunders gather for the flood, 
And in the darkness men die where they stood, 
And dying slay, or scattered limb from limb 
Cease in a flash where mad-eyed cherubim 
Of Death destroy them in the night and mud : 
When landmarks vanish — murder is become 
A glory — cowardice, conscience — and to lie, 
A law — to govern, but to serve a time : — 
We dying, lifting bloodied eyes and dumb, 
Behold the silver star serene on high, 
That is thy spirit there, O Master Mind sublime. 

— Ronald Ross. 



222 CARL SANDBURG 



STATISTICS 

Napoleon shifted 

Restless in the old sarcophagus 

And murmured to a watchguard : 

"Who goes there?" 

" Twenty-one million men, 

Soldiers, armies, guns, 

Twenty-one million 

Afoot, horseback, 

In the air, 

Under the sea." 

And Napoleon turned to his sleep : 

" It is not my world answering ; 

It is some dreamer who knows not 

The world I marched in 

From Calais to Moscow." 

And he slept on 

In the old sarcophagus 

While the aeroplanes 

Droned their motors 

Between Napoleon's mausoleum 

And the cool night stars. 

— Carl Sandburg. 



JOHN SANDES 223 



AUSTRALIANS TO THE FRONT! 

(Captain Cook hears the Drums) 

Fkom the Scheldt to the Niemen, 

Hark, the music of the drums ! 
Not unthrilled the souls of freemen 

When that instant message comes. 
Rolling east the wild fantasia 

Stirs the Orient blood to flame ; 
And the drums call Austral-asia 

And she answers to her name. 

Far away from hosts in battle, 

Yet in time with marching feet. 
Here and now the war-drums rattle 

In the sunbright city street. 
Horse and foot in martial manner, 

Swift commands, and glances high, 
Naked steel and silken banner ; 

Thus the ranks go proudly by. 

But within the gardens spacious, 
Not a stone's throw from the crowd 

One who fronts the landscape gracious 
Listens to the war-drums loud. 



224 JOHN SANDES 



Beats the eager drummer harder, 
And methinks the bronze can hear, 

In those eyes a flash of ardor ! 
On that cheek a noble tear ! 

Dauntless Captain, did'st thou ever, 

With thy sailor-eyes of gray 
Searching out from thy endeavor 

That sequestered flower-starred bay, 
Dream that some day those who love thee 

Here would stake their all of worth, 
For the flag that waved above thee 

And the land that gave thee birth ? 

And the dauntless Captain listens : 

Ah, if only he could speak ! 
But a vagrant raindrop glistens 

On that scorched and blistered cheek, 
And the faith that does not falter 

Still may hear his whisper low : 
"Son, this new land doth not alter 

Britain's breed of long ago." 

— John Sandes. 



EGBERT SANDFORD 225 



HER PRAYER — FOR HIM 

I do not ask that he may never yield 
When fighting on the foam or on the field, 
Since this I know : — 
Where'er his country calls my man will go. 

I only pray 

That while he is away 

You guard and guide him day by day ! 

And give me strength to tend his little ones 

Until he comes. 

On land or sea, — 
Wherever he may be, 
God, kiss my man for me ! 

— Egbert Sandford. 



Q 



226 CLINTON SCOLLARD 



THE VALE OF SHADOWS 

There is a vale in the Flemish land, 

A vale once fair to see, 
Where under the sweep of the sky's wide arch, 
Though winter freeze or summer parch, 
The stately poplars march and march, 

Remembering Lombardy. 

Here are men of the Saxon eyes, 

Men of the Saxon heart, 
Men of the fens and men of the Peak, 
Men of the Kentish meadows sleek, 
Men of the Cornwall cove and creek, 

Men of the Dove and Dart. 

Here are men of the kilted clans 

From the heathery slopes that lie 
Where the mists hang gray and the mists hang white, 
And the deep lochs brood 'neath the craggy height, 
And the curlews scream in the moonless night 

Over the hiJJs of the Skye. 

Here are men of the Celtic breed, 
Lads of the smile and tear, 



CLINTON SCOLLARD 227 

From where the loops of the Shannon flow, 
And the crosses gleam in the even-glow, 
And the halls of Tara now are low, 
And Donegal cliffs are sheer. 

And never a word does one man speak, 

Each in his narrow bed, 
For this is the Vale of Long Release, 
This is the Vale of the Lasting Peace, 
Where wars, and the rumors of wars, shall cease, 

The valley of the dead. 

No more are they than the scattered scud, 

No more than broken reeds, 
No more than shards or shattered glass, 
Than dust blown down the winds that pass, 
Than trampled wefts of pampas-grass 

When the wild herd stampedes. 

In the dusk of death they laid them down 

With naught of murmuring, 
And laughter rings through the House of Mirth 
To hear the vaunt of the high of birth, 
For what are all the kings of earth 

Before the one great King ! 

And what shall these proud war-lords say 
At foot of His mighty throne ? 



228 CLINTON SCOLLARD 

For there shall dawn a reckoning day, 
Or soon or late, come as it may, 
When those who gave the sign to slay 
Shall meet His face alone. 

What, think ye, will their penance be 

Who have wrought this monstrous crime ? 

What shall whiten their blood-red hands 

Of the stains of riven and ravished lands ? 

How shall they answer God's stern commands 
At the last assize of Time ? 

For though we worship no vengeance-god 

Of madness and of ire, 
No Presence grim, with a heart of stone, 
Shall they not somehow yet atone ? 
Shall they not reap as they have sown 

Of fury and of fire ? 

There is a vale in the Flemish land 
Where the lengthening shadows spread 

When day, with crimson sandals shod, 

Goes home athwart the mounds of sod 

That cry in silence up to God 
From the valley of the dead ! 

— Clinton Scollard. 



F. G. SCOTT 229 



REQUIESCANT 

On lonely watches, night by night, 
Great visions burst upon my sight, 
For down the stretches of the sky 
The hosts of dead go marching by. 

Strange ghostly banners o'er them float, 
Strange bugles sound an awful note, 
And all their faces and their eyes 
Are lit with starlight from the skies. 

The anguish and the pain have passed 
And peace hath come to them at last ; 
But in the stern looks linger still 
The iron purpose and the will. 

Dear Christ, who reign'st above the flood 

Of human tears and human blood, 

A weary road these men have trod : 

O house them in the home of God ! 

— F. G. Scott. 
Near Ypres, May, 1915. 

(Major, 3rd Brigade, Canadian Division, British Expedi- 
tionary Force.) 



230 SIR OWEN SEAMAN 



THE WAYSIDE CALVARY 

(Lines written on the anniversary of the outbreak of the 

war.) 

Now with the full year Memory holds her tryst 
Heavy with such a tale of bitter loss 
As never Earth has suffered since the Christ 
Hung for us on the Cross. 



If God, O Kaiser, makes the vision plain : 
Gives you on some lone Calvary to see 
The Man of Sorrows Who endured the pain 
And died to set us free — 



How will you face beneath its Crown of thorn 
That Figure stark against the smoking skies, 
The Arms outstretched, the Sacred Head forlorn 
And those reproachful Eyes ? 

How dare confront the false quest with the true 
Or think what gulfs between the ideals lie 
Of Him Who died that men might live — and you 
Who live that men may die. 



SIR OWEN SEAMAN 231 

Ah, turn your eyes away : He reads your heart ; 
Pass on and, having done your work abhorred, 
Join hands with Judas in his place apart, 
You who betrayed your Lord. 

— Owen Seaman. 



232 ALAN SEEGER 



I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH 

I have a rendezvous with Death 

At some disputed barricade, 

When Spring comes round with rustling shade 

And apple blossoms fill the air. 

I have a rendezvous with Death 

When Spring brings back blue days and fair. 



It may be he shall take my hand 

And lead me into his dark land 

And close my eyes and quench my breath ; 

It may be I shall pass him still. 

I have a rendezvous with Death 

On some scarred slope of battered hill, 

When Spring comes round again this year 

And the first meadow flowers appear. 



God knows 'twere better to be deep 
Pillowed in silk and scented down, 
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep, 
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, 
Where hushed awakenings are dear. 



ALAN SEEGER 233 



But I've a rendezvous with Death 
At midnight in some flaming town, 
When Spring trips north again this year, 
And I to my pledged word am true, 
I shall not fail that rendezvous. 

— Alan Seeger. 
(Killed in battle at Belloy-en-Santerre, July, 1916.) 



234 "SERANUS" 



THE MOTHER 

Out of the bitter, the sweet ; 

Out of the pain, the joy ; 
Out of the mists, the morning star ; 

Out of my travail, my boy. 

Out of old flesh, new flesh ; 

Out of old bone, new bone ; 
Out of my side, my treasure and pride ; 

My breast his earliest throne. 

Stiff in the trenches, and stark ; 

Dead 'ere the battle was won ; 
For that which is Right, for Love and Light, 

Freely I gave my son. 

After the bitter, the sweet ; 

After the pain, the joy — 
I will not falter, nor flinch, nor faint ; 

Proudly I give my boy. 

— " Seranus." 



THE REV. EDWARD SHILLITO 235 



A THANKSGIVING 

Before the winter's haunted nights are o'er, 
I thankfully rejoice, that stars look down 

Above the darkened streets, and I adore 
The Heavens in London Town. 

The Heavens, beneath which Alfred stood, when he 
Built ramparts by the tide against his foes, 

The skies men loved, when in eternity 
The dreamlike Abbey rose ; 

The Heavens, whose glory has not known increase 
Since Raleigh swaggered home by lantern-light, 

And Shakespeare looking upwards knew the peace, 
The cool deep peace of night. 

Under those Heavens brave Wesley rose betimes 
To preach ere daybreak to the tender soul ; 

And in the heart of Keats the starry rhymes 
Rolled, and for ever roll. 

I too have walked with them the heavenly ways, 
Tracing the sweet embroideries of the sky, 

And I shall not forget, when arcs shall blaze, 
And all the lights are high. 

— Edward Shillito. 



236 FRANK SIDGWICK 



"FORM FOURS" 
a volunteek's nightmare 

If you're Volunteer Artist or Athlete, or if you de- 
fend the Home, 

You sacrifice "Ease" for "Attention," and march 
like a metronome ; 

But of all elementary movements you learn in your 
Volunteer Corps 

The one that is really perplexing is known as the 
Forming of Fours. 

Imagine us numbered off from the right: the Ser- 
geant faces the squad, 

And says that the odd files do not move — I never 
seem to be odd ! 

And then his instructions run like this (very simple 
in black and white) — 

" A pace to the rear with the left foot, and one to the 
right with the right." 

Of course if you don't think deeply, you do it without 

a hitch ; 
You have only to know your right and left, and 

remember which is which ; 



FRANK SIDGWICK 237 

But as soon as you try to be careful, you get in the 

deuce of a plight, 
With " a pace to the right with the left foot, and one 

to the rear with the right ! " 

Besides, when you're thoroughly muddled the Ser- 
geant doubles your doubt 

By saying that rules reverse themselves, as soon as 
you're " turned about " ; 

So round you go on your right heel, and practice 
until you are deft 

At " a pace to the front with the right foot, and one 
to the left with the left." 

In my dreams the Sergeant, the Kaiser, and Kipling 

mix my feet, 
Saying "East is left, and Right is Might, and never 

the twain shall meet I" 
In my nightmare squad all files are odd, and their 

Fours are horribly queer, 
With " a pace to the left with the front foot, and one 

to the right with the rear ! " 

— F.S. 



238 MAY SINCLAIR 



FIELD AMBULANCE IN RETREAT 

Via Dolorosa, Via Sacra 



A straight flagged road, laid on the rough earth, 
A causeway of stone from beautiful city to city, 
Between the tall trees, the slender, delicate trees, 
Through the flat green land, by plots of flowers, by 
black canals thick with heat. 

II 

The road-makers made it well 

Of fine stone, strong for the feet of the oxen and of 
the great Flemish horses, 

And for the high wagons piled with corn from the 
harvest. 

And the laborers are few ; 

They and their quiet oxen stand aside and wait 

By the long road loud with the passing of the guns, 
the rush of armored cars and the tramp of an 
army on the march forward to battle ; 

And, where the piled corn-wagons went, our drip- 
ping Ambulance carries home 

Its red and white harvest from the fields. 



MAY SINCLAIR 239 

III 

The straight flagged road breaks into dust, into a 

thin white cloud, 
About the feet of a regiment driven back league by 

league, 
Rifles at trail, and standards wrapped in black 

funeral cloths. Unhasting, proud in retreat, 
They smile as the Red Cross Ambulance rushes by. 
(You know nothing of beauty and of desolation who 

have not seen 
That smile of an army in retreat.) 
They go : and our shining, beckoning danger goes 

with them, 
And our joy in the harvests that we gathered in at 

nightfall in the fields ; 
And like an unloved hand laid on a beating heart 
Our safety weighs us down. 

Safety hard and strange ; stranger and yet more hard 
As, league after dying league, the beautiful, desolate 

Land 
Falls back from the intolerable speed of an Ambu- 
lance in retreat 
On the sacred, dolorous Way. 

— May Sinclair. 



240 THE REV. ISAAC GREGORY SMITH 



CLOSE YOUR RANKS 

Yes ! Draw them close and closer still, 
The silken threads, that bind in one 

The prince, the peasant, rich and poor, 

Hark ! Hark ! The Armageddon is begun. 

O Britons all, let Duty be 

The watchword and the panoply. 

The last to draw the sword, but not 
The first to sheathe it ; slow we rise 

To arms. 'Tis Duty's stern behest, 
A peal of thunder from the skies, 

Which bids us to defend the Right 

Against the tyranny of Might. 

Did we forget in the days gone by, 
"Not each for each but all for all," 

The sacred bond of Brotherhood, 
By which great empires rise or fall ? 

Nay ! But that evil dream is past, 

That strange aloofness healed at last. 

Dear Isle, dear tiny speck in space, 
Responsive to thy drums of war, 



THE REV. ISAAC GREGORY SMITH 241 

And thrilled by loyalty of love, 

They come, thy sons from shores afar ; 
Thy Flag, fair floating on the breeze 
Beckons them o'er the trackless seas. 

So far and near, so one and all, 

Though each one differs from the others, 
We stand together as of old, 

For round the Flag we all are brothers. 
And so we close our ranks to be 
The phalanx, which is victory. 

— Isaac Gregory Smith. 



242 MARION C. SMITH 



HEART OF ALL THE WORLD 

(Belgium) 

Heartstruck she stands — Our Lady of all Sorrows — 
Circled with ruin, sunk in deep amaze ; 

Facing the shadow of her dark to-morrows, 
Mourning the glory of her yesterdays. 

Yet is she queen by every royal token, 

There, where the storm of desolation swirled : 

Crowned only with the thorn — despoiled and 
broken — 
Her kingdom is the heart of all the world. 

She made her breast a shield, her sword a splendor, 
She rose like flame upon the darkened ways ; 

So, through the anguish of her proud surrender 
Breaks the clear vision of undying praise. 

— Marion C. Smith. 



CHARLES HAMILTON SO RLE Y 243 



"ALL THE HILLS AND VALES ALONG" 

All the hills and vales along 
Earth is bursting into song, 
And the singers are the chaps 
Who are going to die perhaps. 

O sing, marching men, 

Till the valleys ring again. 

Give your gladness to earth's keeping, 

So be glad, when you are sleeping. 

Cast away regret and rue, 
Think what you are marching to. 
Little live, great pass. 
Jesus Christ and Barabbas 
Were found the same day. 
This died, that went his way. 

So sing with joyful breath. 

For why, you are going to death. 

Teeming earth will surely store 

All the gladness that you pour. 

Earth that never doubts nor fears, 
Earth that knows of death, not tears, 



244 CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY 

Earth that bore with joyful ease 
Hemlock for Socrates, 
Earth that blossomed and was glad 
'Neath the cross that Christ had, 
Shall rejoice and blossom too 
When the bullet reaches you. 

Wherefore, men marching 

On the road to death, sing ! 

Pour your gladness on earth's head, 

So be merry, so be dead. 

From the hills and valleys earth 

Shouts back the sound of mirth, 

Tramp of feet and lilt of song 

Ringing all the road along. 

All the music of their going, 

Ringing, swinging, glad song-throwing, 

Earth will echo still, when foot 

Lies numb and voice mute. 

On, marching men, on 

To the gates of death with song. 

Sow your gladness for earth's reaping, 

So you may be glad, though sleeping. 

Strew your gladness on earth's bed, 

So be merry, so be dead. 

— Charles Hamilton Sorley. 

(Captain, Seventh (Service) Battalion of the Suffolk 
Regiment, killed in action in France on Oct. 13, 1915.) 



ROBERT J. C. STEAD 245 



KITCHENER OF KHARTOUM 

Weep, waves of England ! Nobler clay 
Was ne'er to nobler grave consigned ; 

The wild waves weep with us to-day 
Who mourn a nation's master mind. 

We hoped an honored age for him, 
And ashes laid with England's great; 

And rapturous music, and the dim 

Deep hush that veils our Tomb of State. 

But this is better. Let him sleep 

Where sleep the men who made us free, 

For England's heart is in the deep, 
And England's glory is the sea. 

One only vow above his bier, 

One only oath beside his bed : 
We swear our flag shall shield him here 

Until the sea gives up its dead ! 

Leap, waves of England ! Boastful be, 

And fling defiance in the blast, 
For Earth is envious of the Sea 

Which shelters England's dead at last. 

— Robert J. C. Stead. 



246 JAMES STEPHENS 



THE SPRING IN IRELAND: 1916 



Do not forget my charge I beg of you ; 

That of what flow'rs you find of fairest hue 

And sweetest odor you do gather those 

Are best of all the best — a fragrant rose, 

A tall calm lily from the waterside, 

A half -blown poppy leaning at the side 

Its graceful head to dream among the corn, 

Forget-me-nots that seem as though the morn 

Had tumbled down and grew into the clay, 

And hawthorn buds that swing along the way 

Easing the hearts of those who pass them by 

Until they find contentment. — Do not cry, 

But gather buds, and with them greenery 

Of slender branches taken from a tree 

Well bannered by the spring that saw them 

fall: 
Then you, for you are cleverest of all 
Who have slim fingers and are pitiful, 
Brimming your lap with bloom that you may 

cull, 
Will sit apart, and weave for every head 
A garland of the flow'rs you gathered. 



JAMES STEPHENS 247 

II 

Be green upon their graves, O happy Spring, 

For they were young and eager who are dead ; 

Of all things that are young and quivering 

With eager life be they remembered : 

They move not here, they have gone to the clay, 

They cannot die again for liberty ; 

Be they remembered of their land for aye ; 

Green be their graves and green their memory. 

Fragrance and beauty come in with the green, 
The ragged bushes put on sweet attire, 
The birds forget how chill these airs have been, 
The clouds bloom out again and move in fire ; 
Blue is the dawn of day, calm is the lake, 
And merry sounds are fitful in the morn ; 
In covert deep the young blackbirds awake, 
They shake their wings and sing upon the morn. 

At springtime of the year you came and swung 
Green flags above the newly-greening earth ; 
Scarce were the leaves unfolded, they were young, 
Nor had outgrown the wrinkles of their birth : 
Comrades they thought you of their pleasant hour, 
They had but glimpsed the sun when they saw you ; 
They heard your songs e'er birds had singing power, 
And drank your blood e'er that they drank the dew. 



248 JAMES STEPHENS 

Then you went down, and then, and as in pain, 
The Spring affrighted fled her leafy ways, 
The clouds came to the earth in gusty rain, 
And no sun shone again for many days : 
And day by day they told that one was dead, 
And day by day the season mourned for you, 
Until that count of woe was finished, 
And Spring remembered all was yet to do. 



She came with mirth of wind and eager leaf, 
With scampering feet and reaching out of wings, 
She laughed among the boughs and banished 

grief, 
And cared again for all her baby things ; 
Leading along the joy that has to be, 
Bidding her timid buds think on the May, 
And told that Summer comes with victory, 
And told the hope that is all creatures' stay. 

Go, Winter, now unto your own abode, 
Your time is done, and Spring is conqueror 
Lift up with all your gear and take your road, 
For she is here and brings the sun with her : 
Now are we resurrected, now are we, 
Who lay so long beneath an icy hand, 
New-risen into life and liberty, 
Because the Spring is come into our land. 



JAMES STEPHENS 249 

III 

In other lands they may, 
With public joy or dole along the way, 
With pomp and pageantry and loud lament 
Of drums and trumpets, and with merriment 
Of grateful hearts, lead into rest and sted 
The nation's dead. 

If we had drums and trumpets, if we had 

Aught of heroic pitch or accent glad 

To honor you as bids tradition old, 

With banners flung or draped in mournful fold, 

And pacing cortege ; these would we not bring 

For your last journeying. 

We have no drums or trumpets ; naught have we 
But some green branches taken from a tree, 
And flowers that grow at large in mead and vale ; 
Nothing of choice have we, or of avail 
To do you honor as our honor deems, 
And as your worth beseems. 

Sleep, drums and trumpets, yet a little time ; 
All ends and all begins, and there is chime 
At last where discord was, and joy at last 
Where woe wept out her eyes : be not downcast, 
Here is prosperity and goodly cheer, 
For life does follow death, and death-is here. 

— James Stephens. 



250 ARCHIBALD T. STRONG 



AUSTRALIA TO ENGLAND 

By all the deeds to Thy dear glory done, 
By all the life blood spilt to serve Thy need, 
By all the fettered lives Thy touch hath freed, 

By all Thy dream in us anew begun ; 

By all the guerdon English sire to son 

Hath given of highest vision, kingliest deed, 
By all Thine agony, of God decreed 

For trial and strength, our fate with Thine is one. 

Still dwells Thy spirit in our hearts and lips, 
Honor and life we hold from none but Thee, 
And if we live Thy pensioners no more 

But seek a nation's might of men and ships, 

'Tis but that when the world is black with war 

Thy sons may stand beside Thee strong and free. 

— Archibald T. Strong. 
August, 1914. 



VISCOUNT STUART 251 



SAILOR, WHAT OF THE DEBT WE OWE 

YOU? 

Sailor, what of the debt we owe you ? 

Day or night is the peril more ? 
Who so dull that he fails to know you, 

Sleepless guard of our island shore? 

Safe the corn to the farmyard taken ; 

Grain ships safe upon all the seas ; 
Homes in peace and a faith unshaken — 

Sailor, what do we owe for these ? 

Safe the clerk at his desk ; the trader 
Counts unruined his honest gain ; 

Safe though yonder the curs't invader 
Pours red death over hill and plain. 

Sailor, what of the debt we owe you ? 

Now is the hour at last to pay, 
Now in the stricken field to show you 

What is the spirit you guard to-day. 

— Andrew John Stuart. 

(Eldest son of the Earl of Castlestewart, Lieut. 6th 
Royal Scots Fusiliers, killed in action in France between 
Sept. 25 and 27, 1915.) 



252 ELIZABETH TOWNSEND SWIFT 



FROM AMERICA 

Oh, England, at the smoking trenches dying 

For all the world, 
Our hearts beat and we watch your bright flag flying 

While ours is furled ; 

We who are neutral (yet each lip with fervor 

The word abjures) : 
Oh, England, never name us the time-server ! 

Our hearts are yours : 

We that so glory in your high decision, 

So trust your goal ; 
All Europe in our blood, but yours our vision, 

Our speech, our soul ! 

— Elizabeth Townsend Swift. 



RABINDRANATH TAGORE 253 



THE TRUMPET 

Thy trumpet lies in the dust. 

The wind is weary, the light is dead. Ah, the evil 

day! 
Come fighters, carrying your flags and singers with 

your songs ! 
Come pilgrims, hurrying on your journey ! 
The trumpet lies in the dust waiting for us. 

I was on my way to the temple with my evening 

offerings, 
Seeking for the heaven of rest after the day's dusty 

toil; 
Hoping my hurts would be healed and stains in my 

garments washed white, 
When I found thy trumpet lying in the dust. 

Has it not been the time for me to light my lamp ? 

Has my evening not come to bring me sleep ? 

O, thou blood-red rose, where have my poppies 

faded? 
I was certain my wanderings were over and my debts 

all paid 
When suddenly I came upon thy trumpet lying in the 

dust. 



254 RABINDRANATH TAGORE 

Strike my drowsy heart with thy spell of youth ! 

Let my joy in life blaze up in fire. 

Let the shafts of awakening fly piercing the heart of 

night and a thrill of dread shake the palsied 

blindness, 
I have come to raise thy trumpet from the dust. 

Sleep is no more for me — my walk shall be through 

showers of arrows. 
Some shall run out of their houses and come to my 

side — some shall weep. 
Some in their beds shall toss and groan in dire dreams : 
For to-night thy trumpet shall be sounded. 

From thee I had asked peace only to find shame. 
Now I stand before thee — help me to don my 

armor ! 
Let hard blows of trouble strike fire into my life. 
Let my heart beat in pain — beating the drum of thy 

victory. 
My hands shall be utterly emptied to take up thy 

trumpet. 

— Rabindranath Tagore. 



FRANK TAYLOR 255 



ENGLAND'S DEAD 

(" Make them to be numbered with thy Saints : in glory- 
ever lasting.") 

Homeward the long ships leap ; swift-shod with joy, 
Striding the deep sea-dykes fast home they fare, — 

Where is my wedded love ? Where is my boy ? 
Where go the dead that died for England, where ? 

Homeward the long ships leap ; but not with these 
Thy boy, thy wedded love, O gentle-eyed 

Woman of England, nor far over seas 

Mixing with dull earth sleep the dead that died 

For England. They, in God's completed aims, 
Bear each his part ; unseen of bounded sight, 

Down the vast firmament there floats and flames, 
Crested with stars and panoplied in light, 

Of strenuous clean souls a long array, 

With lambent lance and white, bright, blinding 
sword, 
All riding upon horses, — what are they ? 

They are the dead which died in Christ their Lord 

For England, from old time ; with God made one, 
As on the mount the triple vision shone, 



256 FRANK TAYLOR 

So shine they now, and like the noontide sun 
Before them all the fair Saint George rides on. 

There goes the boy of Crecy whispering low 

To him of Agincourt, a kingly pair, 
With many mighty men which bent the bow, — 

There go the dead that died for England, there ; 

There go those quenchless Talbots, there the flower 
Of Devon, Grenville, Gilbert, mariners rare, 

She too who thought foul scorn of Philip's power, — 
There go the dead that died for England, there ; 

And Sidney who the rippling cup resigned, 

And happy Wolfe ; wan Pitt released from care, 

Nelson the well-beloved and all his kind, — 
There go the dead that died for England, there ; 

And he who brake the Corsican's strong spell, 
And Nicholson, impatient of despair, 

And Gordon, faithful, desolate sentinel, — 

There go the dead that died for England, there ; 

And there unhelmeted, ungirt of brand, 
Victoria moves with mild, maternal air, 

Still vigilant, still prayerful for the land, — 
There go the dead that died for England, there. 

Nor ride they idly nor with indolent rein, 
Irresolute, as men that seek no foe, 



FRANK TAYLOR 257 



But by the pathless sea, by peak and plain, 

Bright-eyed, stern-lipped, all day, all night, they go 

Forth as a fire that snatches and devours 

Wind-withered woods, so go they swift and fell, 

Warring with principalities and powers, 

Hunting through space the swart, old bands of 
Hell; 

And all the sounding causeways of the spheres 
Ring like white iron with the rhythmic tread 

Of these and their innumerable peers ; 

But most round England muster England's dead, 

Round England cradled in her roaring seas, 

With Arctic snows white-girdled, bathed in suns 

Asian and Australasian, there go these ; 
And where one solitary trader runs 

His English keel, and where one lonely sword 
Glimmers for England, one unsleeping brain 

Watches and works for England, thitherward 
Gather the bright souls of her servants slain 

For her, and lock their shimmering ranks, and sweep 
Round England's child as sweeps the northern 
gale 

Round some stark pine-tree on the moorland steep, 
And from the flash and rattle of their mail 



258 FRANK TAYLOR 

Hell's pale marauders shudderingly recoil 
Frustrate. O glad condition and sublime 

Of our undying dead, to fight and foil 
The ancient foe, continually to climb 

Through God's high order of His Saints, to meet 
Some soul whose star-like name lit all their course, 

And commune with him, to discern and greet 

Old kindred, love, and friendship, hound and horse ; 

To see God face to face, and still to see 

And labor for the loves that grope on earth, 

To wait serenely till all souls shall be 
One in God's aristocracy of worth, — 

O glad condition and sublime ! whereto 

That southern tomb thy hands may never tend 

Was but the gateway thy loved boy passed through, 
Thy wedded love passed through, that he might 
wend 

Homeward to thee ; thou can'st not see the blaze 
Of his great blade nor hear his trumpets blafe, 

Yet thick as brown leaves round about thy ways, 

There go the dead that died for England, there. 

— Frank Taylor. 

(This poem was written about 1902, and was published 
in the Spectator of June 12, 1915, having been found among 
the author's papers by his executor, by whose consent it is 
here reprinted.) 



SARA TEASDALE 259 



SPRING IN WAR TIME 

I feel the Spring far off, far off, 
The faint far scent of bud and leaf — 

Oh how can Spring take heart to come 
To a world in grief, 
Deep grief ? 

The sun turns north, the days grow long, 
Later the evening star grows bright — 

How can the daylight linger on 
For men to fight, 
Still fight? 

The grass is waking in the ground, 
Soon it will rise and blow in waves — 

How can it have the heart to sway 
Over the graves, 
New graves ? 

Under the boughs where lovers walked 

The apple-blooms will shed their breath — 
But what of all the lovers now 
Parted by death, 
Gray Death? 

— Sara Teasdale. 



260 EDITH M. THOMAS 



SAID ATTILA THE HUN TO — 

It was not here — it was not there, 
It was not now — it was not then . . . 
Beyond the bounds of Otherwhere, 
Two tyrant lords of vanished men — 
They meet in shadowy mail and casque, 
They greet, and of each other ask. 

{Two shades whose work on earth was dire, 
Mid darted lights and whelming gloom, 
Their eyes the lamps of lethal fire, 
Fierce thirst for power their endless doom — 
To seek, to be thrown back, to seek ! . . . 
To learn the triumph of the weak !) 

"Lo, I am Attila, who laid 

Proud Aquileia in the dust ; 

The Slav, the Teuton, slaked my blade — 

Of blood I had the sacred lust ! 

Yea, Attila am I ; but thou, 

Who has our brand upon thy brow !" 

"I, too, made treasure-cities smoke, 
And blood with ashes mixed therein ; 



EDITH M. THOMAS 261 

And from the sky, on sleeping folk, 
Mine engines did full vengeance win I" 
To whom said Attila the Hun, 
"In all of this thou hast well done !" 

"But I," the other shade replies, 
"Where'er I dealt the killing blow, 
Or gave mine iron cross as prize, 
Therewith I bade God's blessing go ... " 
. . . Then, Attila fell back, outdone — 
God's scourge, and not His favored son ! 

— Edith M. Thomas. 



262 GILBERT THOMAS 



THE UNCONQUERED HOPE 

(A ship recently arrived in England from America, laden 
with toys, the gift of the American people, for the children 
both of the Allies and the Enemy.) 

From sea to sea, from shore to shore, 
The clouds of death and doom 

Veil the sun's soft and kindly beam ; — 
Yet, can ye see one light agleam 
Where a stately ship comes threading 
Its pathway thro' the gloom ? 

Say ye 'tis but a ship of steel ? 
Are ye so dead, so blind ! 

Can ye not see the rainbow spray 
That dances on the good ship's way, 
Nor hear the strange, deep whispers 
That wander on the wind ? 

What are the gifts the proud ship brings 
To the weary world and old ? 
Trifles to fill a childish hand? 
Why, hardly the angels understand 
The richness of the treasure 
That lies within its hold ! 



GILBERT THOMAS 263 

Oh, breaking thro' the mist of dreams 
That wreathe the distant bar, 
The vessel comes with a strange light dress'd, 
And, tho' it sails from out the West, 
Upon its flag there glistens 
A golden Eastern star ! 

For when the world is blackest, 
And man is blind with blood 

And buried deep in his guilt and pride, 
This is the ship that takes the tide 
And sends its lamp of healing 
Across the soul's dark flood. 

It comes once more as it oft has come/ 
With its faery wings outspread — 
Can ye not see them, eyes that grope, 
Nor read its name, The Unconquered Hope, 
Nor yet discern the halo 
Around its Figurehead ? 

What are the gifts the proud ship brings ? 
Oh childish smiles and tears ; 

Oh childish faith that breaks thro' all 
The sin that holds the world in thrall ! . . . 
A rift is in the darkness — 
A ship, a ship appears. 

— Gilbert Thomas. 



264 GRACE E. TOLLEMACHE 



SONNET 

October 1st, 1914 

England ! that thou wast faint of heart we said, 
Or inly thought ; and that the wreath of bays 
Drooped on thy brow, withered with length of 

days, 
A dust-layered trophy of the age-long Dead : 
We wronged thee much ! — Myriads this month 

have bled 
And died for thee, and though the end delays, 
There's not one that a daunted spirit betrays 
Nor that for thee life's last drop would not shed ! 

We deemed thy robes grown faded, — but fresh- 
dyed 
We now behold them, — and their crimson dye 
Is of thy sons' spilt blood, deep-hued and glowing : 
England ! thou art comely in thy pride 
And clad in glorious raiment, and thy going 
Is as of one who goes to victory ! 

— Grace E. Tollemache. 



CHARLES HANSON TOWNE 265 



TO MY COUNTRY 

One told me he had heard it whispered : "Lo ! 
The hour has come when Europe, desperate 
With sudden war and terrible swift hate, 

Rocks like a reed beneath the mighty blow. 

Therefore shall we, in this her time of woe, 
Profit and prosper, since her ships of state 
Go down in darkness. Kind, thrice kind is Fate, 

Leaving our land secure, our grain to grow !" 

America ! They blaspheme and they lie 
Who say these are the voices of your sons I 

In this foul night, when nations sink and die, 
No thought is here save for the fallen ones 
Who, underneath the ruin of old thrones, 

Suffer and bleed, and tell the world good-by ! 

— Charles Hanson Towne. 



266 D. HOWARD TRIPP 



AFTERMATH 

With steady, silent tread 
Bearing aloft their dead — 
One at the foot, one at the head 
The stretcher-bearers go ; 
Out of the dark they come 
Stumbling and staggering, some 
Bearing, maybe, a chum, 
Pair after pair they go. 

Vague, silhouetted ghosts, 

Remnants of martyr'd hosts ; 

Think on the blatant toasts 

Raised to "King Glory"! 

Tread lightly, that's the way, 

Wake not the dead, lest they 

Have other words to say 

Of the same story ! 

— D. Howard Tripp. 

(Lance-Corporal, London Irish Rifles, British Expedi- 
tionary Force.) 



KATHARINE TYNAN 267 



A GIRL'S SONG 

The Meuse and Marne have little waves ; 

The slender poplars o'er them lean. 
One day they will forget the graves 

That give the grass its living green. 

Some brown French girl the rose will wear 
That springs above his comely head ; 

Will twine it in her russet hair, 
Nor wonder why it is so red. 

His blood is in the rose's veins, 
His hair is in the yellow corn. 

My grief is in the weeping rains 
And in the keening wind forlorn. 

Flow softly, softly, Marne and Meuse ; 

Tread lightly all ye browsing sheep ; 
Fall tenderly, O silver dews, 

For here my dear Love lies asleep. 

The earth is on his sealed eyes, 

The beauty marred that was my pride ; 
Would I were lying where he lies, 

And sleeping sweetly by his side ! 



268 KATHARINE TYNAN 

The Spring will come by Meuse and Marne, 
The birds be blithesome in the tree. 

I heap the stones to make his cairn 
Where many sleep as sound as he. 

— Katharine Tynan. 



LOUIS UNTERMEYER 269 



THE LAUGHERS 

Spring ! 

And her hidden bugles up the street. 

Spring — and the sweet 

Laughter of winds at the crossing ; 

Laughter of birds and a fountain tossing 

Its hair in abandoned ecstasies. 

Laughter of trees. 

Laughter of shop-girls that giggle and blush ; 

Laugh of the tug-boat's impertinent fife. 

Laughter followed by a trembling hush — 

Laughter of love, scarce whispered aloud. 

Then, stilled by no sacredness or strife, 

Laughter that leaps from the crowd ; 

Seizing the world in a rush. 

Laughter of life. . . . 

Earth takes deep breaths like a man who had feared 

he might smother, 
Filling his lungs before bursting into a shout. . . . 
Windows are opened — curtains flying out ; 
Over the wash-lines women call to each other. 
And, under the calling, there surges, too clearly to 

doubt, 



270 LOUIS UNTERMEYER 

Spring, with the noises 

Of shrill, little voices ; 

Joining in "Tag" and the furious chase 

Of "I-spy," "Red Rover" and "Prisoner's Base"; 

Of the roller-skates whir at the sidewalk's slope, 

Of boys playing marbles and girls skipping rope. 

And there, down the avenue, behold, 

The first true herald of the Spring — 

The hand-organ gasping and wheezily murmuring 

Its tunes ten-years old. . . . 

And the music, trivial and tawdry, has freshness 

and magical swing. 
And over and under it, 
During and after — 
The laughter 
Of Spring ! . . . 

And lifted still 

With the common thrill, 

With the throbbing air, the tingling vapor, 

That rose like strong and mingled wines ; 

I turned to my paper, 

And read these lines : 

" Now that the Spring is here, 

The war enters its bloodiest phase . . . 

The men are impatient. . . . 

Bad roads, storms and the rigors of the winter 

Have held back the contending armies. . . . 



LOUIS UNTERMEYEB 271 

But the recruits have arrived, 

And are waiting only the first days of warm weather. . . . 

There will be terrible fighting along the whole 

line — 
Now that Spring has come." 

I put the paper down . . . 

Something struck out the sun — something unseen ; 

Something arose like a dark wave to drown 

The golden streets with a sickly green. 

Something polluted the blossoming day 

With the touch of decay. 

The music thinned and died ; 

People seemed hollow-eyed. 

Even the faces of children, where gaiety lingers, 

Sagged and drooped like banners about to be furled — 

And Silence laid its bony fingers 

On the lips of the world . . . 

A grisly quiet with the power to choke ; 

A quiet that only one thing broke ; 

One thing alone rose up thereafter . . . 

Laughter ! 

Laughter of streams running red. 

Laughter of evil things in the night ; 

Vultures carousing over the dead ; 

Laughter of ghouls. 

Chuckling of idiots, cursed with sight. 

Laughter of dark and horrible pools. 



272 LOUIS UNTERMEYER 

Scream of the bullets* rattling mirth, 

Sweeping the earth. 

Laugh of the cannon's poisonous breath. . . . 

And over the shouts and the wreckage and crumbling 

The raucous and rumbling 

Laughter of death. 

Death that arises to sing, — 

Hailing the Spring ! 

— Louis Untermeyer. 



MARIE VAN VORST 273 



THE AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS 

Neutral ! America, you cannot give 
To your sons' souls neutrality. Your powers 

Are sovereign, Mother, but past histories live 
In hearts as young as ours. 

We who are free disdain oppression, lust 
And infamous raid. We have been pioneers 

For freedom and our code of honor must 
Dry and not startle tears. 

WeVe read of Lafayette, who came to give 
His youth, with his companions and their powers, 

To help the Colonies — and heroes live 
In hearts as young as ours ! 

Neutral I We who go forth with sword and lance, 
A little band to swell the battle's flow, 

Go willingly, to pay again to France 
Some of the debt we owe. 

— Marie Van Vorst. 



274 ALBERTA VICKRIDGE 



THE CONSCRIPT 

Then former stars were faint and signs were fled. 
Dawn flamed and sleepers roused : you saw men's 

souls 
Crowned of that fire with terrible aureoles. 
You saw — and hid your head, and hid your head. 
What of you, O unwilling, shall be said ? 
England, Beloved, 
Say that Pain crowned even mine with all men's 
souls. 

Joyous as guest unto the rose-heaped board, 
Dreamful as lover to his dreams' desire, 
Steadfast as martyr to the pitiless fire, 
My sons, yet not to any task abhorred, 
But to love's service, went with one accord. 
No less, Beloved, 
My heart perforce shall kindle at thy fire. 

Toiled in my vineyard since the early sun, 
Toiled through the drouth, the ardent heat of 

noon, 
These, my true laborers. Say, who earns my 

boon, 



ALBERTA VICKRIDGE 275 

My honorable wage, my deep Well-done, 
He that shall come at rise or set of sun ? 
Even he, Beloved, 
Who serves thee there, whether at eve or noon. 

The marriage-feast was spread within my house, 
Red flowed the wine, loud rose the eager din. 
Prepared for honored guests, the fare therein 

Now bids another company carouse. 

O heedless, find you welcome in my house ? 
Even I, Beloved, 
Compelled from hedge and highway to come in. 

Renownless Christs of a new Calvary, 

My children died, love's dearest debt to pay. 
Thief, who have filched your peace in vain, to-day 
Beside that ransoming love unforced and free, 
Perish you not on a most shameful tree ? 
Not so, Beloved, 
For I shall meet thy Dead in heaven to-day. 

— Alberta Vickridge. 



276 A. STODART WALKER 



IN A SLUM 

I never heard him speak a kindly word, 
My tears were answered with a savage oath, 

He drank what we could very ill afford, 
He was a bully and a drunkard both. 

He broke my body as he broke my soul, 
I shivered when I heard his stumbling feet ; 

At times the very household "sticks" he stole, 
To pawn and pay for women in the street. 

I stitched and labored for his children's bread, 
Fourpence a shirt the sweated wage I earned, 

Save when the doctor forced me to my bed, 
Where thrice a mother's travail I had learned. 

The day he left me for the barrack square, 
He swore we women were no earthly use 

For anything but filling men with care, 

His parting words were words of foul abuse. 

And now they tell me of a hero's death, 

How one to twelve he held the Huns at bay, 

And won the Cross, yet with his passing breath 
He bade the chaplain "take his face away." 



A. STODART WALKER 277 

Inside the pubs the neighbors speak his praise, 
The man who brought the world about our slum, 

Or by the open door they stand and gaze, 
And wonder why his slattern wife is dumb. 

The preacher dwells the ways of God upon, 
Surpassing man's design and woman's wit ; 

Oh God, I can't be sorry he is gone, 
But going I am glad he did his bit. 

— A. Stodart Walker. 



278 SIR HERBERT WARREN 



ENGLAND TO DENMARK 

August, 1915 

Great little land, old comrades of the sea, 
Salt of its salt, whelps of its Viking brood, 
Sharers with us in its free fearless mood, 

Narrow your home, world-wide your chivalry ! 

Now call we kin for the past and the years to be, 
Now is the name of righteous Cnut renewed, 
Forgiven and forgot all days of feud, 

In your sure aid and swift sweet sympathy. 

Your forbears ruled us with the wise King's yoke, 

Your Princess binds us with her Queenly grace, 

To-day your strong sons all our hearts constrain, 

Who could not brook a foul and dastard stroke, 

But swept between, and rather death would face, 

Than that sea-murder Danish waves should 

stain. 

— Herbert Warren. 



ALBERT D. WATSON 279 



MOTHER OF NATIONS 
WHY? 

Does the Mother of Nations draw the sword 
To rescue her children oppressed ? 

They have all that the richest lands afford ; 

They sit content at an ample board 
As safe as a bird in its nest. 

Has she laid her spear on the shield of Mars 

New lands in the wars to gain ? 
Her dominions extend wherever the stars 
Are blushing with shame for our foolish wars ; 

Her ships are on every main. 

And not that the world may acclaim her grand 

Is the roar of her guns on the seas ; 
Her name is lustred on every strand, 
Her glory is known to the farthest land 
Where her standard floats on the breeze. 

Ah this is the pillar of cloud and fire 

That leads her hosts along ; 
This, this is the goal of their deep desire, 
The road where their feet shall never tire, — 

To be just, keep faith and be strong. 



280 ALBERT D. WATSON 

So the Mother of Nations has risen in might 

At the word of the onward call ; 
She has shaken her banners forth to the light, 
And marched to the front of the people's fight 

Like the van of a tidal wall. 

And the future shall say of her sons who died 

Wherever their feet have trod 
With millions of comrades in arms allied ; 
"They cast the treasures of earth aside 

And marched to the goals of God." 

— Albert D. Watson. 
Toronto. 



WILLIAM WATSON 281 



OUR MEN 

Our men, they are our stronghold, 

Our bastioned wall unsealed, 
Who, against Hate and Wrong, hold 

This Realm that never quailed ; 
Who bear the noblest burden 

Life lays on shoulders broad, 
Asking not fame or guerdon, 

Asking not gold or laud. 

They go where England speeds them ; 

They laugh and jest at Fate. 
They go where England needs them 

And dream not they are great, 
And oft, 'mid smoke and smother 

By blinding warstorm fanned 
Sons of our mighty Mother, 

They fall that she may stand. 

Our sailors, save when sleeping 

The light sleep of the sea, 
Their ancient watch are keeping, 

Mother, for thine and thee I 



282 WILLIAM WATSON 

They guard thy maiden daughters 
From worse than death or pain ; 

The men who ward the waters, 
The men who man the main. 

When navies meet and wrestle, 

And their vast arms strike home — 
Vessel with monstrous vessel 

Matched on the flame-lit foam — 
What fleet returns in glory ? 

What fleet makes haste to fly ? 
O Sea, that knowest our story, 

Thou, thou canst best reply ! 

Then hail to all who gave us 

Their might of arm and soul, 
Hot and athirst to save us, 

To heal, and keep us whole ; 
Whether they serve where yonder 

Far-burrowing trenches run, 
Or where the ocean thunder 

Peals with the thundering gun. 

— William Watson. 






THE REV. LAUCHLAN MACLEAN WATT 283 



THE REAPERS 

Red are the hands of the Reapers, 

And the harvest is so white ! 
Red are the feet that are treading 

The threshing floors by night : 
And, on the young brows, dripping 

As with the dews of morn, 
Deep rose-red are the woundings, 

Like scars of a crown of thorn. 



Tired, so many, with reaping, — 

Tired with treading the grain, 
Still they lie, in their sleeping, 

Low in the Valley of Pain, — 
Never again to be quaffing 

The joy of life, like wine ; 
Never again to be laughing 

In Youth's glad hour divine. 

Birds shall sing in the branches, 
Children dance by the shore ; 

But they who shared the red reaping 
Shall come back never more. 



284 THE REV. LAUCHLAN MACLEAN WATT 

Let whoso can forget them, 

Walking life's noisy ways ; 
We who have looked on the Reapers 
Go quietly, all our days. 

— Lauchlan Maclean Watt. 
France, 1916. (Chaplain of the Force.) 



EDITH WHARTON 285 



BELGIUM 

La Belgique ne regrette rien. 

Not with her ruined silver spires, 
Not with her cities shamed and rent, 
Perish the imperishable fires 
That shape the homestead from the tent. 

Wherever men are staunch and free, 
There shall she keep her fearless state, 
And, homeless, to great nations be 
The home of all that makes them great. 

— Edith Wharton. 



286 MARGARET WIDDEMER 



THE WAKENED GOD 

The War-god wakened drowsily ; 

There were gold chains about his hands. 

He said : "And who shall reap my lands 
And bear the tithes to Death for me ? 

"The nations stilled my thunderings ; 
They wearied of my steel despair, 
The flames from out my burning hair : 

Is there an ending of such things ? " 

Low laughed the Earth, and answered : " When 
Was any changeless law I gave 
Changed by my sons intent to save, 

By puny pitying hands of men ? 

"I feel no ruth for some I bear. . . . 
The swarming, hungering overflow 
Of crowded millions, doomed to go, 

They must destroy who chained you there. 

"For some bright stone or shining praise 
They stint a million bodies' breath, 
And sell the women, shamed, to death, 

And send the men brief length of days. 



MARGARET WIDDEMER 287 

"They kill the bodies swift for me, 
And kill the souls you gave to peace. . . . 
You were more merciful than these, 

Old master of my cruelty. 

"Lo, souls are scarred and virtues dim : 
Take back thy scourge of ministry, 
Rise from thy silence suddenly, 

Lest these still take Death's toll to him !" 

The War-God snapped his golden chain : 
His mercies thundered down the world, 
And lashing battle-lines uncurled 

And scourged the crouching lands again. 

— Margaret Widdemer. 



288 IOLO ANEURIN WILLIAMS 



FROM A FLEMISH GRAVEYARD 

(January, 1915) 

A year hence may the grass that waves 
O'er English men in Flemish graves, 
Coating this clay with green of peace 
And softness of a year's increase, 
Be kind and lithe as English grass 
To bend and nod as the winds pass ; 
It was for grass on English hills 
These bore too soon the last of ills. 



And may the wind be brisk and clean, 
And singing cheerfully between 
The bents a pleasant-burdened song 
To cheer these English dead along ; 
For English songs and English winds 
Are they that bred these English minds. 



And may the circumstantial trees 
Dip, for these dead ones, in the breeze, 
And make for them their silver play 
Of spangled boughs each shiny day. 



IOLO ANEURIN WILLIAMS 289 



Thus may these look above, and see 
And hear the wind in grass and tree, 
And watch a lark in heaven stand, 
And think themselves in their own land. 

— Iolo Aneurin Williams. 



290 MARGARET L. WOODS 



THE FIRST BATTLE OF YPRES 1 

Grey field of Flanders, grim old battle-plain, 
What armies held the iron line round Ypres in the rain, 
From Bixschoote to Baecelaere and down to the 
Lys river ? 

Merry men of England, 

Men of the green shires, 

From the winding waters, 

The elm-trees and the spires, 
And the lone village dreaming in the downland yonder. 
Half a million Huns broke over them in thunder, 
Roaring seas of Huns swept on and sunk again, 

1 Author's Note. — In the first Battle of Ypres, 
which was fought in October-November, 1914, a thin 
line of British, supported on each wing by small bodies 
of French, stopped the push of an immense German army 
on Calais. The allusion in the latter part of the poem is 
not to "the angels of Mons," but to a story received from 
a very competent witness. On three occasions the Ger- 
mans broke through our line, then paused and retired, 
for no apparent reason. On each of these occasions prison- 
ers, when asked the cause of their retirement, replied : 
"We saw your enormous Reserves." We had no Reserves. 
This story was incidentally confirmed by the remark of 
another officer on the curious conduct of the Germans in 
violently shelling certain empty fields behind our lines. 



MARGARET L. WOODS 291 

Where fought the men of England round Ypres in 

the rain, 
On the grim plain of Flanders, whose earth is fed 

with slaughter. 

North-country fighting men from the mine and the 

loom, 
Highlander and lowlander stood up to death and 

doom, 
From Bixschoote to Baecelaere and down to the 

Lys river. 

London men and Irish, 
Indian men and French, 
Charging with the bayonet, 
Firing in the trench, 
Fought in that furious fight, shoulder to shoulder. 
Leapt from their saddles to charge in fierce disorder, 
The Life Guards, mud and blood for the scarlet 

and the plume, 
And they hurled back the foemen as the wind the 

sea spume, 
From Bixschoote to Baecelaere and down to the 
Lys river. 

But the huge Hun masses yet mounted more and 

more, 
Like a giant wave gathering to whelm the sweet shore, 
While swift the exultant foam runs on before and over. 



292 MARGARET L. WOODS 

Where that foam was leaping, 
With bayonets, or with none, 
The cooks and the service men 
Ran upon the Hun. 
The cooks and the service men charged and charged 

together 
Moussy's cuirassiers, on foot, with spur and sabre; 
Helmed and shining fought they as warriors fought 

of yore — 
Till calm fell sinister as the hush at the whirlwind's 

core, 
From Bixschoote to Baecelaere and down to the 
Lys river. 

Lo! the Emperor launched on us his guard of old 

renown, 
Stepping in parade-march, as they step through 

Berlin town, 
On the chill road to Gheluveldt, in the dark before 

the dawning. 

Heavily tolled on them 
Mortal mouths of guns, 
Gallantly, gallantly 
Came the flower of the Huns. 
Proud men they marched, like an avalanche on us 

falling, 
Prouder men they met, in the dark before the 
dawning. 



MARGARET L. WOODS 293 

Seven to one they came against us to shatter us 

and drown, 
One to seven in the woodland we fought them up and 

down. 
In the sad November woodland, when all the skies 

were mourning. 

The long battle thundered till a waxing moon might 
wane, 

Thrice they broke the exhausted line that held them 
on the plain, 

And thrice like billows they went back, from view- 
less bounds retiring. 

Why paused they and went backward, 
With never a foe before 
Like a long wave dragging 
Down a level shore 
Its fierce reluctant surges, that came triumphant 

storming 
The land, and powers invisible drive to its deep 

returning ? 
On the grey field of Flanders again and yet again 
The Huns beheld the Great Reserves on the old 

battle-plain, 
The blood-red field of Flanders, where all the skies 
were mourning. 



294 MARGARET L. WOODS 

The fury of their marshalled guns might plough 

no dreadful lane 
Through those Reserves that waited in the ambush 

of the rain, 
On the riven plain of Flanders, where hills of men 

lay moaning. 

They hurled upon an army 
The bellowing heart of Hell, 
We saw but the meadows 
Torn with their shot and shell. 
We heard not the march of the succours that were 

coming, 
Their old forgotten bugle-calls, the fifes and the 

drumming, 
But they gathered and they gathered from the 

graves where they had lain 
A hundred years, hundreds of years, on the old 

battle-plain, 
And the young graves of Flanders, all fresh with 
dews of mourning. 

Marlborough's men and Wellington's, the burghers 

of Courtrai, 
The warriors of Plantagenet, King Louis' Gants 

glaces — 
And the young, young dead from Mons and the 

Marne river. 



MARGARET L. WOODS 295 

Old heroic fighting men, 
Who fought for chivalry, 
Men who died for England, 
Mother of Liberty. 
In the world's dim heart, where the waiting spirits 

slumber, 
Sounded a roar when the walls were rent asunder 
That parted Earth from Hell, and summoning them 

away, 
Tremendous trumpets blew, as at the Judgment 

Day- 
And the dead came forth, each to his former banner. 

On the grim field of Flanders, the old battle plain, 
Their armies held the iron line round Ypres in the 

rain, 
From Bixschoote to Baecelaere and down to the 

Lys river. 

— Margaret L. Woods. 



296 



KITCHENER 

If Death had questioned thee, 

" Soldier, where woukTst thou take, 

The immitigable blow ? " 

Thou hadst answered, "Let it be 

Where the battalions shake 

And break the entrenched foe." 

Yet wert thou nobly starred 
And destined. Thou dost die 
On the grim English sea ; 
Thou goest to the old tarred 
Great Captains, and shalt lie 
Pillowed with them eternally. 

And they shall stir from their rest 

Each in his lordly shroud, 

And say, " Tore God, we have room, 

So are the deeps made proud, 

Behold the glory on his breast, 

Kitchener of Khartoum ! " 

— X. 



LIEUT. FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG 297 



MARCHING ON TANGA 

Marching on Tanga, marching the parched plain 
Of wavering spear-grass by Pangani river, 
England came to me — me who had always ta'en 
But never given before — England, the giver, 
In a vision of tall poplar trees that shiver 
On still evenings of summer, after rain, 
By Slapton Ley, where reed-beds start and quiver 
When scarce a ripple moves the upland grain. 

Then I thanked God that now I had suffered pain 

And, as the parched plain, thirst, and lain awake 

Shivering all night through till cold daybreak: 

In that I count these sufferings my gain 

And her acknowledgment. Nay, more, would 

fain 

Suffer as many more for her sweet sake. 

— Francis Brett Young. 

With the British Expeditionary Force, Marago-Opuni, 
German East Africa. June, 1916. 



Printed in the United States of America. 



HP HE following pages contain advertisements of a 
few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects 



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